The Stars Never Rise
by WikketKrikket
Summary: Sequel to The Moon Never Beams. One year on, and everything is supposed to be going right for Tony- only people keep telling him he's sick. Maybe that's why he's just made the biggest mistake of his life. Unfortunately, it doesn't really explain why he and Penelope are stuck in an alternative version of the 1950s- where Stevie is still living, and is married to his Dad.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello and welcome, as promised, to the sequel! I don't think there's too much I can say here... I was worried the summary was too spoiler-y, but I didn't know what else to put as an adequate description. Hmm. Either way, please enjoy this first chapter and let me know what you think!

Chapter One

**June 2013**

It was never going to be a good day when your so-called best friend opened fire on you in the streets above New York. Tony really should have realised that it was only going to get worse.

He'd suspected for a while now that something was going to go dreadfully wrong, felt the creeping sensation of dread climbing up his neck at all hours of the day and night. The place was just so _empty _without Penny. She'd been away at school for a year now and he still hadn't quite got used to it. He'd certainly lost a lot of weight without her constantly checking up on when he had last eaten. He'd gotten a lot more work done, too, continuous and uncountable modifications to and variations on the Iron Man armour, so that the lab beneath his apartment was full of them. It was like being surrounded by a cold, silent army. Tony liked that. It made him feel _prepared_. New York had caught him by surprise; he wasn't going to let that happen again. Next time, he'd make sure that Stevie and Penny and everyone else, everyone that mattered to him personally and everyone that didn't, all of them, everyone, everyone would be safe. He wouldn't be caught off guard again.

He still had the antenna Loki had used to open the portal, which he had carefully dismantled from the roof and brought down to his lab to analyse, along with helpful notes from Selvig and less helpful ones from Thor. (At least Selvig's were scientific. Thor's sounded more like a fairy tale, technical terms mixed with magic and legend. 'And lo, when the polarity is reversed, the great gateway to another realm dost creep open assuming there is sufficient energy to overcome the barrier of Coulomb' or whatever. The worst part was, Tony got the distinct feeling this was a result of Thor trying to dumb the tech down for the poor backwards mortals to understand. It was beyond infuriating. Also, Thor's handwriting was terrible.) Either way, the analysis was progressing. Not as quickly as Tony would have liked, but between sessions working on the armour, when he couldn't stand the strange creeping sensation of having the antenna behind him, he would turn and examine the equipment in a frenzy. He felt he almost understood it now, almost.

There was nothing in the notes, though, about the weird _vibe _that stuff gave off. For want of a more scientific word, it gave off an _aura_ of fear and something that made it hard to breathe. Tony had learnt to tolerate it, as long as he worked fast enough to distract himself, but he couldn't work out what caused it. Even so, he was close to understanding the rest now, and then, once he knew how it worked, he'd be able to stop it being used ever again. No more uninvited guests from other worlds, not from portals above _his _tower, anyway.

He was painfully aware that it was almost Penny's birthday again and he still hadn't done anything towards making the telescope or observatory he'd promised her last year. But she was a good kid, she would understand. Anyway, she was probably way too busy having fun at the Xavier Institute to even spare a thought for home. She wasn't coming back that summer beyond the odd visit, staying at school with her friends so that Tony and Stevie could go on a honeymoon- a honeymoon Stevie didn't know about, incidentally. She didn't know about the big party planned for when they got back, either. There were times when Tony lost confidence in the wisdom of these ideas, but no, she would love it, he was sure.

The way he saw it, they'd had three options for their wedding. Number one, which would have been his choice, would have been to make it the wedding of the decade. After all, this was a superhero wedding; she was an icon for all ages and he was something of a celebrity himself. Besides, Stevie hadn't got a proper wedding last time. He didn't know the details- he refused to talk about it, not seeing what good it would do- but if it had been kept such a closely guarded secret there was no way she got the big white fairy tale. He'd wanted to find the biggest Church (he had assumed she'd want it to be in a Church) and fill it with hundreds of guests, a few selected members of the press, the other Avengers, with flowers and music and get a dress made for her, one that was perfect for her, make sure that _this _time, she got the wedding she deserved.

She had rejected that outright, of course, which had caused a little tension, but finally he accepted that showy wasn't really her style- at least not away from the battlefield. So, he had offered option two- No press in the ceremony, a small guest list of just personal friends and family, and the dress; with some sort of publicity photo for the morning papers, maybe an interview the week before. She'd rejected that too.

Tony had been frustrated, then. He explained that it wasn't an option to keep it secret, that they were both in the public eye, and it would come out somehow- better that they controlled the how. Besides which, he didn't _want _it to be secret. He wanted to tell everyone. He didn't tell her how much it hurt him that she apparently didn't feel the same.

As it turned out, she had already accepted that what he was saying about the press made sense. No, her issue was with the _wedding_. For all Tony's determination that she would have a _real _wedding this time, for all his intent to spoil her with all the trimmings, she just hadn't _wanted _it. She had been the one to offer up option 3- a private ceremony, with only _close _family and friends, and then a photograph and press release after the event; not before. And that was _all_. The whole thing was laughable as 'family' boiled down to 'Penny' and 'friends' to Rhodes and Pepper. Tony had incredulously pointed out that three guests did _not _make a wedding, to which Stevie had answered they would have enough witnesses. When she had seen his face, she had pointed out they should also invite Penny's Aunt May. She seemed to think this addition was enough.

And so, that's what they were doing. She wouldn't even let him pay for a dress to be made for her. He wasn't even sure she was going to _wear _a dress. She just kept saying that she didn't want any 'fuss'. What Tony didn't understand was _why_. Sometimes he wondered if she really wanted to get married at all.

As she wouldn't let him make any plans for the wedding, Tony had turned to what he did best outside of engineering- started planning a party to end all parties. Not right after the wedding; he had also booked them three weeks in various luxury hotels across Europe as a honeymoon. He'd neglected to mention it to Stevie; it was his wedding gift to her, and he'd spent a long time on deciding what to do. He had debated over taking her to France and Germany and places that would remind her of the war, but eventually decided she would probably enjoy it. She was a bit of a nut for history of all kinds, the things before she was born and the stuff she had slept through, and he had ruefully accepted that Cathedrals and ruins were probably more her thing than beaches and nightclubs. He had even bought her some new paints and a watercolour pad and a set of artists' tools for the trip. They would fly off the morning after the wedding, when across the newspapers stands of America the news of the wedding would be breaking. Then, three weeks later, they'd come home to the surprise party that all the best people would be invited to and finally celebrate properly. It was going to be perfect. He would make sure of it.

The train of thought reminded him that he needed to try and persuade his fellow Avengers to the party. Everyone- including him- seemed to be behaving as if New York had been a one-off gig, but he knew Fury wasn't the kind to let that kind of team up slip away. Widow and Hawkeye wouldn't have come to the wedding, he knew, but they might be persuaded to come to the party. Clint wouldn't be a problem as long as there was beer, Natasha might be a harder nut to crack- and harder to reach in the first place, as she had refused to leave a number. Bruce was the other way around; he would have been more likely to come to the wedding than the party, but Tony was sure he'd show his face if only to be polite. Thor, well, Tony had no idea how he was going to send an invitation to another dimension (and honestly didn't really want to think about it), but Thor seemed a party kind of guy. Still, Stevie would want them all there, so he would make sure they were there. They'd all be together with everyone else and party like there was no tomorrow. Maybe Penny would invite her friends from school. She'd never had friends over before, ever, so as long as they all kept their powers on the down low, everything would be awesome.

None of this was any help in his present situation, which was that Rhodes, in the War Machine suit, had come out of nowhere and was proceeding to shower Tony's brand-new prototype armour with bullets; bullets the armour was reflecting rather well, thank you very much.

"What the hell, man?" Tony demanded, opening up his speakers to the outside world. It seemed the most pertinent question. "Stop it!"

"Then answer my damn calls! Answer anyone's calls! What the hell are you doing?!"

"Uh, right now I'm running a diagnostic to make sure that someone's trigger happy fingers haven't-"

"Tony. Where have you been?"

"Road testing the new Iron Man armour! I'm sorry, _mom,_ I didn't know I needed to check with you first."

Rhodes sighed, and went to fly away. "Just go home, Tony. Asshole."

There was so much disgust in his voice that Tony, for once had no response. Instead he found himself- after a few more laps of his patrol route in the sake of defiance- heading home and still trying to puzzle out what he had done to make Rhodes so angry.

"Jarvis, did we delete Rhodey's birthday or a dinner date or something?"

"I have no idea, sir." Jarvis still sounded aggrieved. He hadn't approved of Tony's latest version of diary management, when he had ordered a complete wipe of his entire schedule for the month in order to focus on the antenna and the suits, but Tony had insisted. He hadn't wanted any distractions. He wanted to make sure everything was ready, that when he did get married (and it was still weird that he was getting married, he tried not to think about it) he would be able to keep everyone safe. "His birthday is on your calendar in September. As for the rest, I have no idea what was there before. You were the one who ordered me to _completely wipe everything, delete it all_, _no restores,_ etc."

"I know, I know, don't nag."

"Sir, I'm worried about your health." Jarvis tried again. "I really think you should talk to a professional."

"I'm _fine_, J. I don't know what you expect me to pay two hundred dollars an hour to talk about."

"If you won't see a therapist, then at least talk to Captain Rogers-"

"Uh, didn't you see us yesterday?"

"I wouldn't call that _talking_, sir."

Tony had to smile at that. No, he wouldn't exactly call it 'talking' either. She seemed to be in cahoots with Jarvis in deciding something was wrong with him, constantly fussing about what he had or hadn't eaten, with the end result that she had shown up the day before with a Chinese takeaway and forced him to eat it. 'Forced' here meaning that she had literally come and physically removed him from the lab when she decided he was taking too long to come up. It was kind of embarrassing to be carried unceremoniously over your girlfriend's shoulder, she, of course, having no more trouble lifting you than she would a child or, indeed, a truck. It was also kind of embarrassing (and unexpected) to admit to himself how attractive he found it. It made it difficult to concentrate on the food in front of him, even though she'd taken the time to make the trip to order from his favourite place. Stevie was still going strong on the no-sex-before-marriage thing, and he was happier than words could express that his enforced almost-year of celibacy by proxy was almost over. He still didn't really think it was fair that she would have been mad if he'd gone off and slept with someone else when she wouldn't sleep with him herself, _especially _as she kept saying that she wanted to. Well, she obviously didn't want to as much as he did, as much as she wanted to keep to some old convention, or they would have done it. As time had gone on the whole thing had begun to feel tantamount to blackmail. Still, he wasn't foolish enough to say so- not again. He developed coping mechanisms over time, various things to distract him from her and the idea of what those strong arms could do to him. So, he had been picking at his Chinese and pointedly thinking about the next suit he wanted to make, grunting and nodding his way along whatever she was saying about their wedding plans (the idea that there was enough in them to talk about was laughable), when he suddenly felt her lean over to take his hand, that had been nervously drumming the table next to his idle fork.

"Tony," she said, very quietly. "I want you to know it isn't too late to back out."

"Back out?" he repeated dumbly, before realising she meant the wedding. It felt like everything inside him rushed to his throat at once, his thoughts in tatters. The idea of her leaving- of not being here all the time- the idea of her being here all the time was sometimes all that kept him- he couldn't- he had known. He had known she didn't really want to get married. He had realised, then, that he was stammering and spluttering verbally as well as mentally. "What? No, I, what? I don't… do you?"

"It's okay, it's okay." She said, looking a little alarmed, squeezing his hand tightly. She couldn't quite look at him. "Tony, look, I love you. I was surprised when you proposed out of nowhere and I, I think maybe you were too. So… it's okay. It's okay if you're getting cold feet. I don't want you to be unhappy, and if it's the wedding making you so ill then-"

"No!" he protested, on his feet suddenly. In his panic he'd slammed his hand down right in the middle of his chow mein, and he could feel the splatters up his arm and over his shirt. Stevie could have laughed, but he was glad she didn't. Instead, she looked alarmed, and sorry for him, and he had felt such a fool he'd stomped off to wash his hands without saying another word.

She had come to find him, though, wrapping her arms round his waist and burying her face in his shoulder. He loved it when she did that, and not even in a sexual way. It always felt like things were going to be okay, like they would be able to face whatever was coming, when she did that.

"Tell me what's wrong," she'd said quietly, a solid and comfortable presence at his back. "Let me help."

And suddenly, he had wanted to. He'd wanted to tell her every last thing preying on his mind, all the worries for the future that disturbed his peace of mind, the sense of dread he couldn't seem to shake, no matter how illogical. How often he couldn't breathe. But he didn't know how to say any of that, he didn't seem to have the words.

"I can't sleep." He'd blurted instead, eventually. "I just can't sleep. After you go home, I go down to the lab, and I work. All night. I can't sleep."

"Okay," she'd said, and he'd felt her press a kiss to the back of his shoulder. "Tony… do you, do you want me to stay tonight?"

"Yeah." He'd said, hating himself for taking her pity, but wanting it all the same. "Yeah, that would be good. You can… I think there's still sheets in Penny's room, they should be clean, she's never here anymore."

"I meant with you."

This was the sort of conversation you had to have face to face. He turned in her arms. "You don't have to do that."

"I want to."

He wanted to, too. Wanting to was an understatement. He was desperate to. But he couldn't let her, not unless she was certain. "Stevie… are you sure? You wanted to wait, for some reason."

"I know." She said, and for a second he thought he saw uncertainty in her eyes, but it disappeared as she reached to run her fingers over his cheek. "But… you've waited this long for me. I want to do something for you." Apparently certain now, she kissed him, fumbling with the buttons on her blouse.

"But… Stevie, you're making it kind of hard to say no…" He mumbled against her lips. If she really _had _changed her mind about waiting, it wouldn't be wrong to go along with it, right? He still didn't get why it had been so important to begin with.

"I'll stay." She repeated, and she did, and it was everything he had hoped it would be. He'd fallen asleep with her hand sleepily tracing round the edge of the arc reactor, feeling more secure than he had for some time. She was safe, and here, and she loved him enough to compromise her principals for him. For a while he forgot all about the lab, about Loki's tech, about the suits. It was just him and Stevie, and once they were married, they would be able to do this forever. Life would be good. Marriage would be good. He'd fallen asleep feeling everything was right in the world.

He'd woken up the next morning- this morning- to the sound of an alarm, the first time in months. Groggy, disorientated, he'd switched it off, looking next to him for Stevie, wondering stupidly if it had been a particularly vivid dream. But no, there had been a note for him left on the next pillow.

_Get up! No snoozing! _It advised. _See you later. I love you. –S _, followed by a frankly excessive and, he suspected, somewhat ironic string of kisses. He'd smiled and done as he was told; after all, who was he to disobey the whims of his lady? He had showered, dressed, and gone down to the lab for an early start. He'd been starting to feel the creeping of guilt about not doing any work the previous night, and was soon engrossed in the latest prototype. This one, he thought, would adapt itself nicely to Stevie's fighting style if she needed armour for a tough fight. That was why he'd instructed Jarvis to block all his calls, it wasn't uncommon for him to do so when he needed to concentrate. There was no need for Rhodes to get so pissed, or to open fire on the new suit just as Tony was taking it out for a trial.

Rhodes had told him to go home, quite firmly, but so far Tony wasn't seeing the need. There wasn't anyone waiting for him, not even a call. Nothing was amiss. Tony had no idea what he'd done to be put under house arrest this time, but he wasn't going to waste the time he had hanging around waiting for it to become clear. There had been some performance defects in the suit where it wasn't fluid enough for mid-air physical attacks. He wanted to recalibrate the limbs- and of course, now, he had to check for superficial damage from Rhodes' bullets. It should only take an hour, tops.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is here." Jarvis said at some point.

"Okay, I'll be right up." Tony said, taking up a screwdriver. There had been more damage than he'd hoped.

"Sir, don't forget the Captain is still waiting." Jarvis said a while later.

"In a minute, don't nag." Tony answered. Stevie would come down if it was anything urgent, she always did. Otherwise, she would just amuse herself until he was done with work. This was important.

As it turned out, it took a little more than an hour. He wasn't sure how much more, time seemed to disappear when he was working. Several more increasingly exasperated reminders from Jarvis that Stevie was upstairs anyway, but she didn't come down. Eventually Jarvis informed him that she had just left.

"Oh, okay." Tony said, distracted by the new body plate he was shaping. "That's alright. Remind me to call her tonight."

"I think that would be wise. She waited for over two and a half hours."

"Really?" Tony was surprised. He hadn't realised. He was probably in the dog house now. "Okay, better make that a reminder to call her before about seven tonight, J."

"It is already seven-ten, sir." Jarvis did not sound impressed. "And Miss Penelope has just arrived home."

"Penny?" That really did surprise him. She was supposed to be at school. "Where is she?"

"The kitchen, sir."

Tony set his work aside for the moment and headed upstairs, hoping nothing was wrong. He thought she _liked _Xavier's. She always seemed happy there, and from what she'd told him, actually had friends. He didn't think she'd even care if she was reverse-grounded now. He didn't want her to go back to the old place, not when she was doing so well.

"Penny?" She looked well, he thought. Older, taller. She was just beginning to lose the angles of a gawky pubescent and soften into the curves of a woman, although she had some way to go. She was wearing a pretty summer dress, like she was going to a garden party. She looked great. Judging by the worried look she was giving him, however, she wasn't thinking the same about him. He went and hugged her, hoping to hide his tiredness, the weight people kept saying he'd lost. She hugged back, cautiously, reluctantly, and broke away quickly without a word. "What are you doing here?" He asked.

"I told the school I wouldn't be back for a few days." She said. "Family emergency. Dad… what were you _thinking_? Uncle Rhodes said you were just flying around in the suit! What's wrong? What did Stevie say?"

"About the suit? She hasn't seen it yet. I want to get it right before I show her."

"You _know _what about! Are you staying together?"

"As far as I know." He suddenly wondered if Stevie had come over for some other reason than just to see him, to check on him. What if the sex had been bad? What if she wanted to split up? He felt his head start to pound. "Why? What has she been saying?"

"What do you _think _she's been saying?!" Penny demanded. "Dad, how could you?! How could you do this to her?! I thought you loved her! I knew you were dumb, dad, but I never thought-"

"She wanted to do it, it was her idea!"

"…what?" Penny looked confused, and then horrified, truly horrified. She covered her mouth and everything. "Oh, Dad, no. No, not even you- tell me you know what I'm talking about."

"The sex before marriage thing?"

Penny sat down heavily, still looking at him with a kind of horror he could now only describe as _awestruck_. "Oh, Dad… Dad, you-she was here. She came here. Didn't you at least talk to her?!"

"I… figured she'd come down if it was important. Like normal." He said, sitting down next to her. "Pen-pen, come on, what is it? Is this why Rhodey was so mad? What's going on?"

"Dad…" She whispered. "You were supposed to get married this morning. The wedding was today. We thought something awful had happened to you. Dad, you missed the wedding."

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

The rest of that night became a kaleidoscope of shattered memories, out of focus and out of order. Refusing to believe Penelope must have been first, demanding an explanation. He'd probably started drinking then. When was it that he had held his hands up in front of him, fascinated to see they were trembling? No, that must have been much later, when he was so drunk he couldn't see straight. He remembered shouting at Jarvis, threatening to shut him down, even though he _knew _Jarvis wasn't to blame, or Pepper or Rhodes or Stevie or Penny, or any of the people he claimed should have reminded him. He had been the one to insist Jarvis delete his month's schedule beyond recovery, it wasn't Jarvis' fault he had no record of the wedding.

He remembered calling Rhodes, wanting to explain he hadn't skipped out on the wedding to test the suit, not deliberately, but by then he had been slurring and his tongue was twisting like a serpent and he wasn't sure he had been able to get the words out. He remembered wondering if it really _had _been an accident, if there wasn't some sneaky part of his subconscious, buried down deep, that had been so scared of forgetting that it had _made _him forget. He wanted to lobotomise himself, like he had Jarvis, like the stupid, stupid moron he was.

He remembered the taste of whiskey and bourbon and something putrid and sour in his mouth. Had he been sick at that point? He remembered Penny's wide, frightened eyes as she tried to take the alcohol away. He'd gone as if to strike her when she tried to insist, stopped short, and then cried, cried the pathetic, ashamed and shaming tears of a drunk. She had hugged him and the undeserved sympathy had made him feel sick. Maybe that was when he had been sick.

He remembered yelling at her, really yelling at her, telling her to fuck off and go back to freak school. He remembered the click of her bedroom door and the clunk of her locking it and the three events must have coincided, but his twisted memory was sure she'd locked the door long before she went in.

He must have called Stevie before any of it, before he was truly drunk. He'd left her two, three, four voicemails before she'd picked up and then he still remembered perfectly her icy tone of voice. She'd been worried. She'd thought he was delayed because he was in trouble, but no. She wouldn't come back over so they could talk. She thought he hadn't turned up because he'd gotten all he wanted when they had sex.

He wasn't sure when he'd gone down to the lab, or what he had been doing to make Penelope follow him there. He could remember the noise as the pieces of Stevie's suit had hit the floor as he threw them aside, making room at his main work station for the antenna. It had the power to open up other dimensions; he remembered being certain, in the way only drunken desperation can be, that it would also open a way to the past. He wasn't going to put up with this, live with this. He would do it again, go back and get it right. He remembered pulling his arm free of Penelope's grip.

At some point, he'd broken a glass tumbler that had been the last of a set his parents had been given as a wedding present. The rest had been broken over the years in similar drunken rages of his father. Maybe they weren't so different. Maybe that, at least, would make Stevie happy.

The antenna had just needed energy to work. He didn't have a tesseract, but the arc reactor would work. It had to. It was the most powerful generator on earth. It didn't matter what Thor thought, this mortal wasn't stupid. He would go back, put this right, and no-one need ever know.

Penny tried to stop him, but he wired it to the reactor in his chest, activated the antenna, and then there was swirling darkness, and he passed out.

The darkness must have been the last thing. Logically, he knew that, but still, his memory would always insist that the last sound he heard in that place, at that time, was the cold impersonal click on the phone line as Stevie hung up on him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Tony expected to wake up with the hangover to end all hangovers, even though it had been years since he had suffered from one. Rather than a pounding head, however, his first sensation was of being rattled and jerked around.

_Oh, great_. He thought. _I've ended up on a train to who-knows-where._

It didn't seem worth opening his eyes for. As if bending to his will, a moment later, the rattling jerked to a halt. He had just settled down again when someone began shaking his arm urgently. Penny's voice finally brought his ears back into the waking world.

"Dad? Dad, please wake up."

He considered ignoring her, delaying the inevitable confrontation. He had never wanted to be so drunk in front of her, let alone drag her along on whatever shenanigans had occurred. And she probably wasn't very impressed he'd forgotten his own wedding. He was too ashamed to face her now.

"Come on, buddy," another voice, unknown to him and with an unusual twang said. "End of the line."

"_Dad_." Penny hissed, sounding panicked, embarrassed now. "_Please_." The fact that she sounded like she was about to cry was enough to make Tony reluctantly open his eyes.

They weren't on a train at all, but an old fashioned bus; meticulously kept so that it looked like new. Tony looked at it. Well, he had bought worse things whilst under the influence of alcohol. He'd make use of it as a party bus.

"End of the line." The stranger repeated, leaning over them to reach the luggage rack above their heads. "Let me get those for you."

"How can it be the end of the line," Tony asked, more distracted by the fact that his head was, amazingly, fine. He supposed he was practically immune to hangovers by now. "When I own the damn bus?"

"Um, Dad…" Penny muttered. The man, in full olde-style uniform no less, gave him a strange look.

"Listen, pal." He said, shrugging. "Some of us want to get home tonight. So like I said, _end of the line_."

"Dad, I think we'd better get off." Penny was next to him, biting her lip. She was dressed to match the bus too, in a white blouse and a matching pink cardigan and flared calf-length skirt. Even he, himself, had changed into some sort of vintage suit somewhere along the way. He tried to follow his drunken logic. Had he decided some sort of 40s themed bus party would win Stevie back? If so, they seemed to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He frowned at the unfamiliar town outside the window.

"Where the hell are we, anyway?" He asked. Penny was on her feet in the aisle, anxiously pulling on his sleeve, trying to get him to follow.

"North Salem." The driver said, frustrated now. "End of the line."

"Urrgh, fine, we get it." Tony sighed and got to his feet, heading onto the street. Penny followed, looking around as if lost. Wasn't this where her school was? She seemed unsure. The driver deposited two cases at their feet, one large, one small; both looking scuffed and old, neither even with wheels. Tony looked at them, wrinkling his nose. "These aren't ours." He said, as the driver went to climb back on board. The man sighed, exasperated, and stepped back down to consult the luggage labels.

"Doctor and Miss Hammond." He read. "Well, that's you, isn't it?"

Tony snorted. "No."

"Well, that's what it said on your ticket."

"Dad, stop messing around!" Penny blurted, putting a hand on his arm and flashing a desperate smile at the driver. "Thank you for your help."

"Miss." The driver nodded begrudgingly, pressing his fingers to the edge of his cap. An instant later he was back on the ancient bus and driving away.

"Well, great." Tony said, nudging the larger suitcase with his foot. "So are we into luggage theft now? Is that what's happening?"

"I think they're ours." Penny replied. "Dad, I… I think we're in the past."

Tony wanted to laugh at her. He _really _wanted to laugh at her. But, in all honesty, he was beginning to draw the same conclusion and was desperately searching his mind for _how _and _why_. Failing to do so, and failing to laugh, he simply said "Oh?"

"If this is North Salem, it's no part I know." Penny said, unable to quite meet his eye even as she explained. "And the bus, and the buildings, and our _clothes_, they're all so old. And just before we woke up here you were drunk and playing around with Loki's tech, the one that opens portals. So I think… I think we're in the past." She looked at him, her eyes wide with fright. "Or a parallel universe," she added, because blind panic was no excuse for logical inaccuracies.

"Or the past of a parallel universe." Tony nodded, searching his pockets to see if there was some way to reduce the possibilities. In the inside of his jacket he found a wallet, and in the wallet bus tickets, for an adult and a minor- Doctor and Miss Hammond- from New York to North Salem, on the 27th August, 1952. "Seems like wherever we are," he commented "We've been set up with a whole life story."

"Can it do that?" Penny looked a little pale. Tony hoped she wouldn't freak; he was only two steps short of it himself. He was so sick of portals and other worlds and- he cut the thought off short, taking a deep breath or two. Such thoughts wouldn't help with the not-freaking.

"Apparently."

"Well, great," she snapped. "How are we going to get home?!"

"I don't know, Pen, calm down."

"Stevie is going to go _nuts_, Dad! You just missed your _wedding_, if we don't get back soon there's no way you'll be able to patch things up! And that's if we even get back, which I don't see how we can do, because the components are all alien parts sitting fifty years in the future! And you don't even have the arc reactor!"

Tony tapped at his chest, stupidly, searching for it, but she was right. He felt strangely naked. He may look otherwise the same, but different clothes, a different name, a different past- something familiar would have been nice. Besides, there isn't much you can't do when you have a reactor built into your chest. Penny didn't seem to have any sympathy, still glaring at him.

"That school has been great for you, hasn't it?" Tony said.

"Yes, actually." Penny looked around again. "Maybe it's still- I mean, maybe it's already- around here somewhere. It's a pretty old building. If we go there maybe-"

"Yeah, but how old is your Professor?" Tony sighed, rifling through the wallet again. "Seriously, Pen, it's not going to be a school yet; not for a while. Xavier is probably only a baby, he won't have powers yet." The search of the wallet discovered an old photograph of a woman who neither of them recognised, a few old-fashioned dollars, and a folded piece of paper with a New Salem address on. Tony showed it to his daughter. "Guess we should head here for now. We need a cab. They had those in the 50s, right?"

As if to spite him, there was not a single car or vehicle of any kind out on the road in either direction of the leafy, winding path they seemed to be standing on. It was already beginning to get dark, but this was quieter than any American road Tony had seen in his life. He couldn't help but feel that the world was somehow doing it on purpose.

"Okay," he said, after a moment. "New plan. Let's walk towards town and try to get a cab there."

Penny picked up the smaller of the two suitcases, twisting the handle anxiously between her hands. She didn't say anything. Tony took the other, not saying anything either, even though he wanted to complain about the stupidity of a bus terminal being in the middle of nowhere with no taxis, and of a large suitcase not having any wheels.

Thankfully, as it turned out, they weren't far from the main street of town at all; the treeline was deceptive in making the stop seem more secluded than it was. Within a few moments they were going down suburban streets, passing small shops and houses and schools, even cars- but no cabs. Penny was looking around with all the awe of a tourist, but Tony just focused on the road, on looking for a taxi. He couldn't afford to let himself think about anything else. He could feel his breath catching at the edge of his throat, and knew if he lost his focus he'd never get it back. He just had to think about getting a cab.

"Dad." Penny said, interrupting his thoughts to nod at a bar. "Why don't you go in there and ask to use their phone?"

It was as good a plan as any- better than wandering blindly and hoping- so Tony left her with the cases and stepped in. The place was half-full, but not rowdy. This was more the quiet conversation and a good-old sing-song kind of place. He made his way to the bar where he was greeted warmly enough.

"Hello, sir, what'll it be?"

"I, uh, I just want to use your phone." Tony said.

"Sure, go ahead." The barman pointed at the phone with its old fashioned dial sitting at the end of the bar. Tony was surprised. He'd expected to be asked to pay, or at least to buy a drink. Maybe the old folks were right and standards really _were _slipping. "You from out of town?" The barman asked.

"New York." Tony said, hurriedly changing the subject before he was asked to provide the reason for his visit. "Hey, you got the number for a cab?"

"Ask the operator, I can never remember." He shrugged apologetically. "It'll take a while for a cab to get here though, where are you heading?"

"Here." Tony showed him the address, only to be assured that no cab was necessary; it was only a block away from where they were.

"Nice street." The barman approved. "Nice people. Have a drink, I'll draw you a map." He was already pouring a scotch. Tony was surprised to find he didn't want it. He might have magically escaped the effects of the night before, but he couldn't help the paranoia that a little more would bring it all rushing back.

"I shouldn't." He said. "I've got my daughter waiting outside."

"All the more reason to have it, my friend." The barman pushed the glass over to him, turning his attention to the back of the address paper to write down the directions. "We don't want the little lady to worry."

Tony went to take the glass and noticed what the barman had already- his hands were trembling.

He downed the scotch. He didn't want Penny to worry.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

The five minute walk promised by the friendly neighbourhood barkeep naturally turned out to be more like fifteen, but, at last, they found the street indicated by the paper. It was just a normal, residential street- no hotel or 'Just Sold' signs to be seen. They made their way up it slowly, peering at the numbers in the growing darkness.

"Is it our house?" Penny asked. "Do you have a key?"

The answer to the second question, and therefore presumably also the first, was 'no'. At last, they found the house- a neat, non-descript little place surrounded by a low white fence. The gate didn't make a sound as they unlatched it, obviously recently oiled, and there was a light on in the front window. With no better plan, Tony rang the doorbell; stepping back just in case there was trouble.

There wasn't trouble, not the normal kind anyway. There was just Stevie, who came to open the door and let them in.

But it wasn't just the shock of finding her here that made his insides lurch. Because it wasn't _his _Stevie, he realised that before the first thought even finished. She was older, her hair was cut shorter in a way that didn't quite suit her, the fifties garb she was got up in made her look almost dowdy; and she was holding the baby in her arms, lying it against her shoulder, much too casually for it to be her first time.

So it didn't matter that she looked at him with recognition. He knew it wasn't- couldn't- be her.

_I want to go home_. He thought, finally elucidating it. He missed his Stevie more than ever.

"You must be Doctor Hammond." Not-Stevie smiled, stepping aside. "Good evening. Hello, Penelope, nice to meet you. Please, come in. I'm sorry, I was just trying to get the little one off to sleep."

"No problem." Tony managed to say, following her in, feeling Penny's desperate looks at his back. She didn't need to worry. He could handle this.

"I'm sorry Howard's not here to meet you." She replied, rubbing the child's back. It murmured sleepily, close to nodding off. "He wanted to be, he must've got caught up at work."

It was like being back in his childhood, Tony thought. _Daddy wanted to be here, but…_ at least some things about this place were the same old story.

"Don't worry." He said. He couldn't quite take his eyes off the baby. Presumably a half-sibling of his. It freaked him out. "…cute kid." He grunted.

"He's a terror." She laughed without any real malice. "You'll be sick of him in a week. Do you want to see your room? Dinner's almost ready but I'm sure you'd like to freshen up first."

"Sure." Tony said. His charm had fled, all this had reduced him to monosyllables.

"Thank you." Penny managed to squeak out. Not-Stevie led the way up the narrow stairs, carrying the baby in one arm and Penny's suitcase in the other, asking as she went about the journey and had they found the place okay. Tony answered on autopilot, without thinking. She looked so much like _his _Stevie.

"The children are at the end of the hall." Not-Stevie said. "The bathroom is the one on the left, and Howard and I are on the right. And this is you." Keeping one hand on the baby, she pushed open the remaining door, which led to a small room containing a single wardrobe, two narrow twin beds with matching night stands and a small table beneath the window with a water jug, bowl and towel laid out. Tony eyed the room with despair, expecting there to be a 'Home Sweet Home' embroidery in there somewhere. There wasn't, thankfully; just a wooden plaque with _If _by Rudyard Kipling carved into it, which was almost as bad. That was all. He turned his attention to the water jug, rather distrustfully. They had running water in the 50s, didn't they? He hoped so.

"Penelope, you're welcome to use the dressing table in my room if you need it." Not-Stevie smiled. "And, Doctor, I hope the-" she looked at the table with its scanty contents and frowned, then sighed. "There _was _a shaving mirror in here. Please excuse me."

Not-Stevie stepped back out onto the landing and Penny shot her father a look of desperate panic. Tony waved a hand at her, muttering 'keep it together, keep it together', although he wasn't altogether sure who it was supposed to benefit. The only way to deal with this was to _not think_. He tried to pay attention to what was going on outside.

He'd heard Not-Stevie disappear down the hall, presumably to deposit the infant. Now she was stood at the top of the stairs, hands on her hips.

"_Edward Howard Stark_." She said, leaving little doubt that she was definitely a mother in this world, "You get out here this _instant_."

A door opened slowly downstairs and a young voice declared "It was James!"

"What was James?" Not-Stevie asked, and it was so reminiscent of his own childhood tellings-off that Tony almost wanted to call out and warn him that it was a trap. It was too late, however, and the kid blundered right into it.

"That took the shaving mirror."

"Was it really?" The boy's mother was not impressed. "Well, I hope that's true, because you know how I feel about lying. It makes me very upset and sad."

There was a slight pause, then the child's voice reluctantly replied. "…it was me. I took it. I'm sorry."

"Teddy." Not-Stevie sighed, exasperated rather than angry now. "Didn't I ask you not to touch anything in there? Come and put it back at once."

"Yes, Mama."

"What did you even want it for?"

"I was practicing faces."

"Faces?"

"Faces!" The child repeated, followed by the necessary sound effects of pulling a silly face. Stevie broke and laughed, but out of sight in the bedroom, Tony was trying to do sums in his head. It was 1952, seven years since the end of the war, since Stevie should have gone on ice. The baby- James, presumably- was less than a year old and irrelevant. But this other kid, this Edward he hadn't seen yet, could he be seven? Six?

If she hadn't hit the ice, she wouldn't have miscarried. So could this boy be the baby she had lost, the one that had caused so many arguments between him and the real Stevie the previous year? He felt sick. It was easier to justify the fact he had taken so long to tell her when it had just been an unformed bundle of cells she hadn't known about; he didn't want to start thinking of it as a _child_. But why hadn't she gone in the ice? He needed to talk to her, find out what was different here. Otherwise, in another sixty years, there was going to be some sort of alternative Universe Tony without a Stevie, and that was unacceptable.

Or, Not-Stevie would be Other-Tony's mother. Grandma? That was even less acceptable.

And what kind of name was _Edward Howard Stark_ anyway? When he was an old man, poor Ned was going to have to put up with all kinds of _Game of Thrones _jokes. At least Tony had missed out on being lumbered with his dad's name, unlike this poor little guy. But Edward, Edward was _his _middle name. Had it just been a favourite of his Dad's? He hadn't imagined his dad to have had anything to do with the naming process, but maybe he had misjudged. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, that Edward was favoured by both his own mother and by Stevie-

Maybe _his _name was Stevie's choice. What if she'd said to his Dad once that if she had a son one day she would call him Edward, and Howard had decided to honour that in secret when his own finally came along? That would explain why he wasn't _Antony Howard_. His dad had never talked about her, but the more and more Tony got to know her, the more he saw Stevie's ghost brushing over his childhood. He really was going to throw up.

"Dad?" Penny whispered as Not-Stevie was still just outside, admonishing the boy for taking the mirror. "A-are you okay? Maybe you should sit down."

"No, I'm fine, I'm okay." Tony answered, loosening his ridiculous collar and tie. It was stuffy in the room, and the shirt made it hard to breathe. It had to be the shirt.

A small face peeped around the door. Clearly this was Edward, who, happily, took after his mother in his looks- an angled face, a little too pinched perhaps, blond hair. The only thing that formed a painful reminder that Tony was now face-to-face with his half-brother was the child's eyes; the exact colour and shape of his father's. Tony could not have guessed at his age, he was bad at that. What was a seven year old meant to look like?

"I'm sorry I took your mirror." Edward said, handing back the small mirror on the collapsible stand. Tony dropped it down on the bed.

"Don't worry, kid." Tony answered. "And hey, show me some of those faces some time."

Edward looked briefly delighted, but then glanced sullenly at his mother. "I can't. Mama says I'm not to borrow the mirror to practice again."

"You can use the mirror in my bedroom, Ted." Not-Stevie soothed him. "Just don't let your father catch you in there."

Tony grimaced sympathetically. He knew first hand what happened when you trespassed into rooms Howard Stark had forbidden you entry to. The most memorable was when he had snuck into the study. He had been nine years old, home for the holidays from boarding school, miles from all his friends, and, having been left to his own devices, had been bored stiff. He'd finished all his books and the internet was still years away. He could have gone to the library, of course, but it was the element of danger that made the bookcases in the forbidden study so enticing. He'd snuck his way in there, at which point the books were forgotten in favour of rifling idly through drawers and filing cabinets, seeing what was what. He'd just found an old, very old, manila folder when Howard came back and he was caught.

Tony had never seen his dad in such a rage before or since. He had torn the file out of Tony's childish hands and told him to leave with all the fury, it seemed, of all the demons of hell. Tony had hightailed it back to his room, but for the rest of that summer and every summer following it, every door in the place was locked shut except for his room, the bathroom, the kitchen and the TV room. His dad barely said two words to him the rest of the break.

Now that Tony thought about it, given the amount of rummaging and concealed drawers and secret locks he'd had to go through to find those files and given the fact his dad had appeared out of nowhere probably following some secret alarm Tony had accidentally triggered, the old folder had probably been some kind of top-top-secret mission of Shield's. But how was he supposed to know that as a child? Even now, the resentment still burned.

If he ever got home, to his own world and time, he was going to go back to the old mansion again and dig out that file, no matter how well it was hidden. He'd just locked the old place up and moved out the moment his parents died; everything should be untouched. Maybe it was time he went through some of the stuff there. Hell, some of it could even be Stevie's. The real Stevie's. The one his Dad had lost and spent decades searching for, turning up some of her worldly possessions on the way.

"I think we'd better just have dinner," Not-Stevie was saying. "There's no telling when Howard will be back and Teddy should have been in bed hours ago."

"He your eldest?" Tony asked.

"Oh. Yes." Stevie smiled a little faintly, but it warmed up as she continued. "He's four, five in September. I can't believe how fast he's grown. Then little James is only eight and a half months." She put a hand to her stomach, and behind the shapeless waist of her skirt Tony suddenly realised there was a small bump. "I don't know how we'll manage when the next one comes along."

"You're expecting again?" It didn't seem fair. His Stevie, the real Stevie, had given everything in the war; she'd offered up her life, lost the child unknown in her womb, lost the ability to ever have any other children and now here was this woman, this imposter, who was trotting out kids like there was no tomorrow.

Tony couldn't stand this room. If they didn't open a window he wasn't going to be able to breathe.

There was a click downstairs, the front door. A second later a voice drifted up, a voice that was familiar and yet jarringly young, a voice Tony hadn't heard for years.

"Annie?" Howard Stark.

"Up here." Not-Stevie answered, immediately leaving the back bedroom and heading down. Their voices were muffled, but in this narrow, cramped house Tony could still hear perfectly as Not-Stevie welcomed her husband home. "Doctor Hammond and his daughter have arrived."

"Great. I'm sorry I'm late, I-"

"Go and wash up, I'll get dinner out before everyone starves."

"I don't deserve you." Lips on skin.

"Stop playing around." Not-Stevie didn't sound like she overly minded. Howard chuckled.

Tony was beginning to feel the strange creeping sensation beneath his skin again, the same feeling he had got whenever he had examined Loki's equipment in any depth. He wondered if the darkness and dread of it could somehow reach him all the way across worlds, and if that was the key to their return.

And then he remembered that he had missed his own wedding, that he could never seem to catch his breath unless he was in the lab working on suits, and he suddenly wondered if it was anything to do with the transmitter at all. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe these feelings were just him. Maybe he really was sick, really was broken. Maybe he had died, and this was hell.

The next sound was his father's foot on the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Here we are at chapter three, and it only covers half the material I wanted it too... as the chapter is already up to normal length and a little more, however, I decided to break it up and stop it being any longer until I posted! Unfortunately, it means this one has come out a little filler-y. Even so, please enjoy! And if anyone wants to guess what it is Howard wants help with, please be my guest... :P

Chapter Three

In the study of his North Salem home, Charles Xavier was having a nightmare. Nightmare, though, was not quite the right word. His sleep was disturbed, restless, but there were no coherent images or feelings to it. Scenes, thoughts, were passing by too quickly for him to process them. He realised this, but could do nothing to slow them down, to keep hold of them. Perhaps that was where the sickening fear was coming from; he was scared this confusion was going to last forever.

"Charles?"

He started upright in his chair. Raven was standing in the doorway.

"Were you asleep?" His sister asked, seeming amused. "Are you alright?"

"No, no, I'm fine. Just thinking." He lied, not very convincingly, resisting the urge to look into her thoughts and see whether or not she believed him. He ran a hand over his face, reinforcing his self-control. The summer break couldn't be over soon enough. He needed to get back to England, to Oxford, back to the disciplines of his studies. An idle mind had too much time to wander.

"Of course." Clearly she did _not _believe him. Wonderful. He really had to work on his lying. "Well, come downstairs. Dinner's ready, everyone's waiting."

"Coming." He followed her out of the study, shutting the door behind him. He still felt strangely uneasy, though his dream had given him nothing specific to focus on. It just felt as if the world had tipped slightly off balance. As he mechanically ate the food his ever-loving parents put in front of him (which, unfortunately, did not compare altogether favourably with the catering at his University) he finally hit on it- perhaps there was simply someone new in town. A new train of thought whispering at the edge of his dreams, that had slipped through the chinks in his sleeping defences, confusing his dreams.

Well, he would soon sort that out. Learning control had been a necessity in the early days of his powers, when the competing thoughts and voices in his head had threatened to drive him mad. It was all old hat now, as his peers at the University would say. He would do a quick meditative sweep after dinner to make sure all was well, and then shut these new voices out of his mind too.

He excused himself without taking dessert and retired to his own bedroom, locking the door and shutting the curtains. The ritual was a little embarrassing, but there was about to be enough pouring into his mind without any additional stimulation. Ruining his brain without even completing an undergraduate degree would have been the worst kind of ignominy.

Preparations made, Charles sat on the edge of his bed and opened his mind slowly, one voice at a time. He knew them all, every person in this small town, even if he'd never met them. He knew who still suffered from the war, he knew those whose thoughts were tormented, he knew their every secret. At first, he just came across the normal trials and tribulations in the life of a suburban population. Even Mrs Stark- the Captain, as he still called her- who frequently fantasied elaborate action sequences in secret was thinking relatively mundane thoughts, planning strategies for bringing her young guest out of her shell and hoping her husband would see to the children if they were noisy while she was out.

That gave him the direction he needed. Ever since Mr and Mrs Stark had moved to their town he had kept an eye on them- made easier by his parents bringing them over for dinner from time to time. They probably wouldn't have if they knew that Mr Stark was not just the commuting business man he appeared, but the head of a secret security organisation who held some very shady secrets. It was worth keeping an eye on him, just in case intervention was required. As for _Mrs _Stark… well, after a while, Charles just felt pity for her. Her pain lessened as time went on, but when he was at home, Charles tried to check in on her now and then. Not because he could do anything, but in the hope that he would find some improvement. Raven, he knew, would have just said they should tell people who she was and Charles would have agreed, but it wasn't their decision.

Still, he should have known this new disturbance would have the incognito Captain America at its heart. The new arrivals were her house guests, at the invitation of her husband who, unfortunately, was too occupied in longing for a cigarette to provide any useful information. The Captain had resolved to take the younger guest on a walk past her new school in the hope it would make her less nervous.

Charles found the mind of this guest and discovered that nervous was _not _the word. The girl was just one step short of total panic, confused and anxious about being discovered, worried about her father. Having thus located her, he probed deeper into the girl's mind, trying to find the root of all her near-overwhelming emotion.

A few moments later, his bedroom door stood unlocked and open as he fumbled around looking for his shoes.

"Raven!" He called, urgently. "Raven! Where are you?"

His foster-sister's head appeared from around an identical door further down the hall. "What is it?"

"We need to walk down to your school. Right now. Hurry up."

"What? My school? Why?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I tried." Charles said, pulling on his successfully located footwear. "Just come on, hurry. I'll try and explain on the way."

Raven hurried. Sometimes when Charles' face was frantic and pale in the way it was now, it was best not to ask too many questions.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

This had to be a punishment for missing the wedding. He had to be in some sort of purgatory for jilters. Otherwise, Tony wouldn't be about to come face to face with his father.

There wasn't time to panic. A moment after he heard Howard's voice, the man was upstairs and looking round the door to the spare room, loosening his tie as he came.

"Hammond." He said, smiling, reaching out to shake Tony's hand.

He looked so _young_. The man Tony remembered had been sixty, seventy. The man in front of him could only be in his early thirties. Tony was _older _than his _dad_. And he finally understood why Stevie always said they looked alike- There was a slight difference in build, his eyes were a different colour, his hair and moustache were styled differently, but all in all, there would be no mistaking that they were related, at the very least.

And if that was the case, how long would it be before someone here realised?

"Nice to meet you, Mr Stark." Penny blurted, jerking forward to shake the hand Tony had left hanging in the air. He just couldn't seem to move until Howard's gaze shifted to Penelope.

"Oh, we met when you were just a tiny little thing, Penelope." He said, with reasonable warmth. "I knew your folks from way back. But who knew you'd grow up so pretty, huh? Look at you, you're all grown up."

It was just ordinary chatter, but it made Tony's stomach churn. _How dare you_, he wanted to say, _how dare you pretend to be interested in your grandkids when you were never even interested in me? _He fought the urge to hustle Penny out of Howard's sight for good, but in any case there would be nowhere to go. He had to be content with moving the conversation away.

"Stark." He said, as casually as he could. "Good to see you." _Lies_. "Thanks for having us."

"I'll appreciate the help," Howard replied, which was news to Tony. "However much you decide to give."

Tony did not like the sound of that one bit. Then again, when he found out what Howard wanted he might be a step closer to explaining why they were here. Or rather, he'd be a step nearer explaining why 'Hammond' and his daughter were here; he and Penny were just here because of the whole drunkenly messing with alien tech thing. It hadn't been his best plan ever, he had to admit.

Memories of the previous night were hazy. He had the idea that he had been hoping to time travel, to go back and make it to the wedding. He was damn stupid when he was drunk.

"Annie's putting the dinner out," Howard said. "You guys head down, I'll be there in a minute. We'll talk properly after." He disappeared out into the hall, where Tony heard him greeting and then berating his young son who had, it seemed, splashed water down himself. Poor kid. At least Tony had been looked after by staff. He'd barely had to deal with his Dad at all.

Of course, unlike little Teddy, he did now have to suffer through a sit down dinner with his dad and fiancée/step mother, neither of whom knew who he was. So there was that to contend with.

"Dad, are you okay?" Penny asked quietly, as down the hall the taps ran again; Howard freshening up after work. "Do you want to leave?"

"And go where?" He asked. "If we're ever going to get back, we're going to need the best tech available in this stupid troglodyte time. That means we need him."

"He said he wanted your help." Penny sounded troubled. "What does he need you for?"

"Technically he wants _Hammond_. And I don't know."

"But you _are _Hammond. Or, or, we've taken their bodies, but they look exactly the same as us. I don't understand." She looked at him a little desperately. "Dad, what's going on?"

"I don't know."

"But-"

"Pen, save us both some time and whatever you're about to ask just assume _I don't know_." He couldn't deal with her questions coming at him from all sides. This was hard enough to process as it was. Penny shut her mouth again. "Right. Now we have to go and have dinner with my dad, yippee."

"Is he that bad?"

"Let's find out." Tony answered, and led the way out. It was too suffocating in that little room. He was having trouble breathing again.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Dinner was strained to say the least. Penelope, on the outside looking in, wasn't sure what she could do to make it any better. She knew her dad had issues with his own father, and now he was sitting across the table from him, watching him be all lovey-dovey with his fiancée. He had found it hard enough, this last year, to deal with the fact Stevie and Howard had been married in the past; she wasn't sure how he would cope with it right in front of his eyes. He was pale, and talking too fast, laughing too loudly. Penny wasn't sure he was coping at all. The last twenty-four hours had been hard on him.

She felt as if she ought to be more angry with him for missing the wedding. She had been, at first. It had been awful, waiting there with Stevie, not knowing where he was. They'd assumed something had happened, some Iron Man thing, a villain to be dealt with. They hadn't waited long, Stevie was too much the hero for that. When he apparently couldn't take any of their calls, they'd split up to search.

And then Rhodes had found him, in the Iron Man suit, yes, but not facing any threat, without any disaster coming to screw them all over again. Just testing another suit, callously not mentioning the wedding at all.

When she'd heard that, Penny had felt like the bottom of her world was falling out all over again. Her father wasn't perfect, and could often be selfish or inconsiderate, but he loved Stevie. He loved her, and to do this to her- Penny had been so angry. Even worse when, after leaving them alone for a suitable period of time, she'd gone home to find that he'd refused to speak to Stevie at all. She'd felt, then, that all her belief in him had been entirely misplaced.

Even that, in some ways, was preferable to the sickening pity she felt for him now. When she'd found out he'd just _forgotten_, she had just felt so sorry, so awful for them both; the kind of awful where there is nothing you can do to change it or to make it better, the kind of awful that would just churn and churn in your stomach without any outlet.

It wasn't her dad's fault. It was almost worse, not having anyone to blame, but anyone could see that he wasn't well. Stevie had occasionally alluded to the idea that she was a little worried about Tony's health, but away at school, Penny hadn't had any idea of the extent it seemed to have reached. Stevie should have told her; if Stevie understood herself. Really, Penny couldn't help thinking it was at least partly her fault. She was the one who had been living with her dad, so she was the one who would have noticed the warning signs- a little _too _much time in the lab, a little more drink than usual, even less sleep, any of hundreds of little changes that would surely have alerted her if she had just been there for more than a week at a time. She should never have gone to the school, never have left him alone, not so soon after his near-death experience with the wormhole in New York. Of course he wasn't going to come out of that unscathed. His view of the world, of himself, of his place in the world, had been totally undermined. They'd been so close to losing. For all his bravado, even her dad couldn't just brush that aside.

He had genuinely scared Penny, the night of the missed wedding. She hadn't seen him since Christmas, where even then she'd noticed something strangely tense in his manners. On the wedding day, when she came home, he'd seemed totally wired, buzzing, adrenaline fuelled as though he was in battle- but he hadn't even spoken to Stevie. And although he'd never been particularly careful of his health, he lived his life in the media spotlight and in accordance with his ego- even when he was so engrossed in work he'd neglect eating and sleeping he didn't usually leave off personal grooming. But his hair had been a little too long and mussed, his face shaved patchily in the wrong places. He'd had dark circles under his eyes and the weight loss that suggested his eating had been a little hit and miss. And then there was the lab.

When she had first moved in, it had taken Penny a while to adjust to Tony's unique lifestyle choices; specifically, how he carefully cultivated and maintained the reputation of being disorganised and irresponsible when behind it all, he always knew exactly where and when everything was. He was a genius, after all- if he didn't know where his shirts or his keys were, or if he missed a board meeting or two because he was working on a project, it was only because he didn't care to remember; if he left the dishes piling up in a kind of game of washing up chicken to see how long it would take Penny to break and do them for him, it was only because he didn't _want _to do them. When it came to the things that interested him, or the things he valued, Tony was meticulous. Everything in the lab had its own place and would be returned there before he came back upstairs. Everything was catalogued, filed, stored systematically, colour-coded. He might leave a few odds and ends around to make it _look _like he was an untidy rebel who didn't follow the rules, but everything else in there had to be just so. In the years she had lived with him, this had become so apparent that Penny had hardly dared venture in there, as if the mere act of trespass would somehow unbalance the order of the place. When she went in this time, she barely recognised it.

It hadn't exactly been out of order when she'd got back, but it had been very full. Suit after suit in various stages of assembly had been rammed into every corner, components and tools laid out on every available surface. There was barely room to walk on the floor, besides a circle of clear space around the half-dismantled equipment Loki and Selvig had set up on the roof. That had almost worried Penny more. It was like her dad didn't want to go near it.

She was worried that he was cracking up. And their current circumstances were hardly going to help.

The only small, paper-thin silver lining to all this was that this version of Stevie wasn't that much like their own. She looked the same, had the same mannerisms of speech and movement, but seemed to be almost entirely domesticated, teasing Howard about how business talk wasn't allowed at dinner and telling 'Ted' to keep his elbows off the table. She was eating small, lady like portions again, like she had when she'd first come out of the ice and had been worried about what they'd think of her. Penny wondered if she was hungry, if she was happy. She was, at least, a far better cook. Their Stevie was very proud of her repertoire of dishes, which extended to meatloaf, hot dogs, boiled rice and suet pudding. Everything else tended to come out tasting either mediocre or very strange indeed. In honour of their guests' arrival, however, today this Stevie had followed their roast chicken and potatoes with a beautiful home-made peach pie. Penny doubted their Stevie knew how to make pastry, let alone how to make it so it melted in the mouth. Tony had wolfed his down- Penny wondered how long it had been since he had eaten- and eagerly accepted other-Stevie's offer of another slice.

"You're a great cook." He said, and Penny winced internally at the mania in his voice. "Thank you, St- um, An- Stephan-?"

"Mrs Stark?" Howard suggested with a significant look.

"Mrs Stark." Tony repeated slowly, with a strange emphasis. Penny frantically sought to move the conversation on.

"It really is great." She blurted awkwardly. "Thank you."

"You should have seen her the first time she tried to make one." Howard chuckled. "I got home and there was just this charred black _lump _and she was crying and crying-"

"That," Other Stevie interrupted, "Was _not _why I was crying."

Howard grunted and turned his attention to his pie. Penny shot her dad a warning look. She could tell he wanted to ask and she absolutely did not want him to ask.

"Why were you crying, Mama?" Ted asked, innocently.

"Oh, something silly." She smiled reassuringly.

"'cause normally you only cry if someone dies or if it's Mr Barnes' birthday and remembering makes you sad."

"Edward, be quiet." Howard's low words whipped across the table. The words, the standard admonishment of children everywhere, sounded like the man was handing down a death sentence to his son. All of a sudden Penny felt she had a much greater understanding of why her dad had disliked her grandfather so much. She smiled as kindly as she could at the little boy across the table.

"The chicken cutlets were on offer, Howard, so I got some more for next week." Other Stevie- Annie, Mrs Stark; Penny had to find a name for her- said, probably to break the silence more than anything. "They're in the freezer." She smiled across at Penelope, as if, as her fellow woman, this topic would be of particular interest to her. "We've always had one. I have so much more free time when I don't have to shop every day."

"Free time to do what?" Howard snorted.

"Oh, I don't know. Cooking. Sewing. Cleaning."

Penny decided to concentrate very hard on her pie, hoping Howard wouldn't notice Tony's triumphant smile. He could at least _try _not to look so delighted about tensions in his father and fiancée's married life.

"The wonders of modern technology, hey?" He said, approvingly.

"Yes." Annie replied, still rather pointed. "You should see some of the guns Howard is making."

"Mostly non-lethal." Howard interjected, annoyed now. "Espionage equipment ready for the war with the Russos, that kind of thing."

"You really think there's going to be an all out war with Russia?" Tony sounded smugly incredulous. It wasn't really fair, Penny thought. Her dad had the benefit of decades of hindsight.

"Maybe not, but you can bet I'm going to convince the generals there will be." Howard smirked. "Best to be prepared."

Annie tutted.

"Mama," Ted asked, curious again. "If there's another war, and Papa has to go fight, do we still get to stay here?"

"There won't be another war, Teddy. Not like before, at least."

"Anyway," Tony added. "They wouldn't make your dad fight. He'd just make the weapons like last time."

"I know, but he still went everywhere!" The little boy's voice swelled with pride. "He went to Germany and France and Italy and all over the USA and then after the war he and Mama went to Japan and-"

"Enough!" If Howard's last parental intervention had sounded like a death sentence, this one was eternal damnation. "I thought I told you to be quiet and eat your dinner!"

Penny heard her dad draw in a sympathetic breath, and prayed he wouldn't say anything. She knew he was going to take all this personally. Then again, from the way his brow had furrowed at the mention of Japan, that was new information to him. Perhaps it would be enough to distract him from the little boy shamefacedly eating the last of his pie, looking utterly miserable.

Penny was having a hard time not saying anything to Howard herself. She looked to Annie. She wasn't their Stevie, but surely she couldn't be so different that she would let this bullying go?

There was another pained silence.

"I might need you to try on your school skirt after dinner, Penelope." Annie said, obviously sensing someone needed to say something. "I think you must have grown some since you sent your measurements. It's alright, there's plenty of hem in it we can let down."

"School skirt?"

"Yes. For September."

"Oh." Penny said. "Thanks."

She did not feel thankful. She did not feel in any way grateful at all. She had time travelled, dimension hopped, and apparently she _still_ had to go to school. And not just a normal school, a school fancy enough to have a uniform. And, more than that, it was a _new _school. She felt sick at the thought.

Just over a year ago, she would never have thought that school was somewhere she could be happy, because she hadn't been. It wasn't as if she had been bullied, not quite; the occasional spiteful comment or episode of spiteful laughter couldn't really be counted. But she hadn't had any friends, there had been no-one to sit with at lunch or partner with in class. Sometimes she had gone entire days not saying anything except answering her name at roll call and saying thank you to the lunch lady who served her food. It was miserable, especially if she got home and her dad didn't come out of the lab. She had missed her Aunt and Uncle more terribly than she could say. They had more or less been her only friends, and the fact of how pathetic that was didn't escape her notice.

Once, a few months after going to live with her dad, she had played hooky. She had simply not gone to school in the morning and instead had stayed in her room all day, half watching her _Doctor Who _box sets, heart pounding as she waited to get caught, scolded, thrown out of school; but her dad didn't notice. She suffered a sleepless night, sure she would be pulled up to the Principal's office the next day, but no. Nobody said anything. Not even the teachers. She was totally invisible.

She'd thought starting at the Xavier Institute would be the same- worse, even, because at least by then she had her dad and Stevie to talk to when she got home. She'd been sure at boarding school she would just slowly wither away and die and it would only be when the holidays came that anyone would notice; that they'd be too busy with their superpowers to notice one of their number was missing.

As it turned out, she was totally wrong. The Xavier Institute was a small school and tightly knit, full of people who didn't have anyone or anywhere else to go. Penny knew she was the outsider as she was one of only a few with an accepting family, not to mention the fact she wasn't exactly a mutant. There had been one or two comments, but all quickly squashed not just by her friends or the faculty but seemingly by the majority of the student body. And she had friends, and got invited to join in with social events, and the teasing was kind rather than malicious. For the first time in her life, she had been in conversations where she had talked for so long her mouth had gone dry. The lessons were interesting, so were the training sessions. She was getting used to her powers, but privately still marvelled sometimes at what she could do. She disliked being away from her family, of course, but was otherwise honestly having the best time of her life.

And now it was all being taken away. She had to start all over again at yet another school, one where she would be worse that foreign, where she would be from the future of another world; her knowledge would be so different to theirs, there would be things being taught as fact she had seen debunked, plenty of things she had never heard of, teaching styles and curriculums she had never come across- and that was before you got onto slang, music, the latest shows, trends, social conventions. She would be slaughtered.

"Why don't we go and take a look at the place?" Annie offered, obviously having seen the concern on Penny's face. "It's not too dark yet, and the place is well lit. I'll just get Teddy to bed and we can go."

Teddy looked like he wanted to argue, but a quick glance towards his father silenced any protest he might have made. As Annie took her son upstairs to supervise his teeth brushing, Penny debated about whether or not to ask her dad to come with them. Was it better to force him to spend time with a version of his fiancée who didn't even recognise him, or to leave him alone with his dad? Either way, she wasn't sure he would cope.

Unfortunately, the decision was made for her as Howard invited Tony to join him out in the back garden for a cigarette. Penny just had to hope he wouldn't join in the smoking. Unsure what else to do, she stacked the bowls and took them into the small kitchen, ready to wash up.

A few moments later, Annie appeared and, with a reassuring smile, led the way out towards Penny's new school.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

It had been a long, long time since Tony had smoked, mostly because he wasn't an idiot. Still, the tobacco was savoury and strong; he wasn't sure if they even had filters on. Howard laughed every time Tony was forced to cough. Really, it was amazing cancer hadn't wiped out his entire generation.

"You always were a dreadful smoker, Hammond." Howard remarked, exhaling a plume of pale grey smoke in a boastful sort of way. "Put it out if you don't want it."

"This is my first one in years." Tony took a last drag, spluttered, and regretfully stubbed it out on the low wall that divided the patio from the lawn beyond. "They're bad for your health, you know."

"So I keep telling my doctor, but he says in my case the benefits outweigh the risks."

"Benefits?" This, Tony wanted to hear; the old styley 'genuine medical science' paid for by the cigarette companies. Had his dad actually believed it? Unfortunately, Howard didn't answer, puffing in silence.

Tony looked at the sky instead. The stars seemed much brighter here- less light pollution, he supposed. In a way it was comforting. They seemed closer, less vast. He knew other worlds, other planets, other dimensions were out there- hell, he was standing in one- but here the sky seemed draped over them like a comforting blanket. He didn't feel like he was going to fall headlong into the void.

"It's not too late to back out." Howard said, suddenly.

There was no point even considering it. Tony wanted to know who this Hammond was, why they were here- and there was only one way to do that. "No," he said. "I'm in."

"What I'm about to show you," Howard said, his tone conversational but the way he was very deliberately stubbing out his cigarette the total opposite, "Is the highest level of confidential. Once I show you, there's no getting out. Hammond, if you see this and try to back out, no matter what I do it won't stop them killing you."

Well, that was just great. Then again, death threats from his dad weren't really anything new. Tony's love of melodrama had to come from somewhere.

"Fine." He said.

Howard looked over his shoulder, craning to see through the empty kitchen and into the dining room. "Women are gone." He remarked. "Let's get started."

Tony followed him inside, wondering what on earth he was about to be shown.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Unfortunately I don't have time to proof-read this today, so please forgive any mistakes and enjoy!

Chapter Four

The study, situated in the basement of the Stark household, was weirdly reassuring to Tony. True, it could only be reached by going down a narrow staircase leading from the kitchen, made of rickety boards pushed into the wall at intervals; whereas the study he remembered was upstairs behind a heavy locked door, but all the same this place was familiar. The desks and work stations, the endless anonymous filing cabinets, the shelves of books. On this occasion, however, there was a screen hanging off one of the cases, a slide projector squatting a few yards away.

Tony remembered it from his childhood. His father had, of course, dabbled in cameras and photographic equipment, but he'd had a weird sentimental hang up for the old slide projector. Or, at least, Tony thought he had. It wasn't like his dad had ever gotten it out to show him, but he had forbidden his son from touching it, so it must have meant something to him.

Tony hoped desperately he hadn't been called down here to see their family photo album. He wasn't ready for that. No matter what the current situation was, it was _him _who should be married to Stevie. And so he would be, as soon as he got back. Assuming she forgave him, of course, but Not-Stevie seemed to like him, so he took that as a good sign.

"Sit down." Howard said, indicating a chair in front of the screen. Without asking, he handed Tony a scotch and casually flipped a switch set into the desk. A strange whirring started up, barely audible but uncomfortable on the back of Tony's neck. It puzzled him.

"Audio disrupter?" He asked. Howard nodded. Tony clenched his fingers together. As always, he was itching to take his father's tech apart and see how it worked. Then again, maybe now, Howard would finally let him. But Tony clenched his hands tighter; he wasn't going to give his dad the satisfaction. That ship had sailed decades ago.

"As I said," Howard sank into the seat on the other side of the projector. "This is top secret. Hammond, how much do you know about the Super Soldier programme?"

"Uh…" Tony stalled. The fact of the matter was, he knew almost everything about it. He'd been a bit of an obsessive fan when he was a kid, much to his dad's annoyance, and had continually pestered him to explain the process. Howard, of course, never talked about it- never talked about _her_- but gradually from books and reports Tony had pieced together a fairly clear idea of what had happened. This had naturally been subsidised later in life with hearing it from Stevie's own, painfully unscientific, perspective. But the question wasn't really what _he_ knew, it was what Hammond knew, and on that score, he had no idea.

"Doesn't matter." Impatient, Howard saved him the trouble of answering. "The point is, we think the Russians must've developed something similar. We know Hydra was working on it in the war, but now it seems like the damn Soviets have gotten the idea too."

"Why, they making some kind of Superman? Have we got a Red Sun situation here?"

"What? No. What we have, Hammond, is a pile of corpses. One that's getting bigger every day." Howard picked up the clicker, pressed a button, and on screen a picture in muted, watered down colours gradually came into view. Tony wished it hadn't. He was looking at the back of a head, caved in by a bullet, a cold time and date in the bottom corner. "This was one of our agents in Berlin." Howard narrated. "This was in Murmansk. In Brussels. In Stalingrad."

Each click brought up another picture. Another murder victim. Tony could feel his pulse rising, his heart racing. There were some days, just some, he wished he'd just stuck to being a CEO. Green energy, that was the way to save the world. No hero nonsense. No graphic pictures of dead Shield Agents, looking horribly real. If horror movies really wanted to be horror, they should cut down the gore to realistic levels, Tony thought. This was worse. There was no obvious, reassuring fakery, just cold, clinical murder. Sometimes it was a bullet, sometimes it was a slash to the throat, sometimes it was garrotte wire; sometimes, if Howard was to be believed, it was a deliberate accident. The pictures clicked on. The bodies mounted.

"Enough!" Tony snapped. He was panting as if he had run a marathon. "That's enough. What am I looking at? Cold War casualties?"

"I know you won't believe me," Howard said, going to refill Tony's glass. Half a mutilated corpse was projected down the side of his face as he leant over to pour the alcohol into the glass. "But we believe this is all the work of one man."

"Impossible." Tony shook his head. "Some of these killings were only twenty-four hours apart, no-one could cover the distance."

"I've been showing you them sorted by method, Hammond." Howard replied. "If you sort them in date, it makes a nice orderly line back and forth across Europe."

"Even so, you'd have to be a machine to just go from job to job to job. You'd never rest. Even the best assassin couldn't-"

"We've heard whispers." Howard interrupted. "We have information. They call him the Winter Soldier."

"The what?" Tony had heard that name before, somewhere. Read it somewhere. He could see it in his mind's eye, in an old fashioned type-written font, but where?

"Just before I wrote to you, an agent sent me this." Howard moved aside from the projector, clicking onto the next photograph. "That agent is now dead."

Tony looked up at the screen, trying not to let his stomach churn. He could see debris; the inside, perhaps, of a building that had been bombed. The foreground was a pile of bodies, burnt to various degrees- the agent had obviously been using them as cover; because if you could tear your eyes away from the grizzly front row of the picture, you could see a man in the background walking away, his back to the camera, his collar turned up and a flat cap pulled down.

"Did you hear about the gas explosion down in Maine?" Howard asked. "The hotel. This is that hotel."

"You don't think it was the gas." Tony closed his eyes but it was no good. He could still see every part of the photograph's gory details in his imagination.

"No. When the CIA was using the hotel as temporary accommodation for Russian defectors and US double agents, no, I don't." Howard shook his head. "I don't know. It's not his usual MO. There were innocent casualties, and usually he keeps the collateral damage to the minimum. But this time…"

"So what makes you think it's the same guy?"

"Because I really hope there isn't more than one of them." Howard sighed and downed his drink. "This is why we need you, Hammond. I need something that can-"

"Papa?" There was a creak and a small, tentative voice from the top of the stairs. It was Edward. "James-"

"Get out!" Howard roared, slamming his hand down on the power button for the projector. The awful picture faded out. Tony wondered if the kid had seen it. He felt sick. "I told you to keep out!" Howard shouted. "Get out!"

Edward hastily backed towards the door, but not quickly enough. Howard, furious, was already up the stairs, dragging the young boy back into the kitchen by the elbow.

"What have I told you?!" Howard demanded. "You do not go down there! Ever!"

"But James is crying…"

"I don't care if the house is burning down, you do not go down to the basement! What is it about that that's so hard to understand?! Did I raise a fool?!"

"No…" Edward sniffed, fighting not to cry. Howard seemed to freeze and for a moment Tony thought he might actually try to comfort the child, but no, of course not.

"Don't snivel." He snapped, disgusted. "If you don't want to get yelled at then you should damn well do what you're told. Now go back to bed, and I don't want to hear another peep out of you, got it?"

"W-what about James?"

"Bed, now!"

Edward turned and fled. Neither of them said anything. The sound of the baby wailing upstairs permeated the room.

Howard leant over the table, pressing his hands hard into it, breathing heavily. The cries from upstairs grew louder.

"You going to deal with that?" Tony asked, cautiously. He was beginning to learn, to suspect some things about his dad and wasn't altogether sure he liked them.

"In a minute." Howard didn't look up. "Annie… Annie's got some nonsense in her head that you have to leave the baby so long to self-soothe. It's damn annoying."

James wailed again, almost shrieking, and with a frustrated sigh Howard all but ran from the room and up the stairs.

Tony knew he shouldn't follow, but he couldn't help it. The scene with Edward had been so painfully familiar, so like his own childhood- but he knew what the kid didn't, he knew that Howard had panicked over his son seeing the awful photographs. He had a morbid curiosity to see more, maybe to understand more- maybe, come to think of it, it explained why his dad had been so furious over the manila folder. Maybe it had contained pictures that would have scarred Tony even more than his dad's shoddy parenting had.

And suddenly, he remembered. That was where he had seen the words 'Winter Soldier'. That had been the label on the file. Howard hadn't been trying to prevent him from seeing similar pictures to Edward, it had been the same ones.

Not that it made any difference, not really. It was no reason to go so ballistic at a young child. Still, he followed Howard up the stairs, not sure what he was hoping to see. Maybe his dad being tender, proving that he did have a heart. Or maybe he just wanted to see some more scenes of discontent, to prove to himself once and for all that the problem had never been him.

Howard stood in the doorway of the boys' room for a moment, before finally going in. In the light that fell in from the hall, Tony could just see his arms reaching into the cot. From where he stood, it seemed like they were trembling. Howard picked up James, muttering 'stop, stop' and 'Your mother isn't here, so give up'. Perhaps James understood, because a moment later he began to settle, calming to thin, reedy whines and hiccoughing sobs before finally falling asleep. All was quiet. Tony could hear Edward trying to stifle tears from the bed near the window.

"Hey." Howard grunted. "Stop that."

"Sorry, Papa."

"I know. I know, I know, but- I've told you a hundred times! Don't come in the basement!"

"I won't. I'm sorry."

"Right. Good. Go to sleep."

"Alright. Good night, Papa."

"Yeah."

Tony began to think it was a harsh response, but didn't have time to complete it. Howard rushed back onto the landing, shut the bedroom door firmly behind him, and was now leaning against the wall, positively _juddering_, almost hyperventilating. For a moment Tony wondered if his dad was having a heart attack, and then realised that no, if anything, this was a panic attack; a severe one at that.

If it wasn't for the evidence of his eyes he would never have believed it. His dad was a self-assured, arrogant, heartless excuse for a man and would never have cared enough about anything _to _panic over it. And yet, here he was, barely able to keep it together, apparently with nothing more needed to trigger it than the presence of his kids.

"Don't tell Annie." Howard gasped. "Don't tell Annie. You can't. Please. Don't tell Annie."

Tony didn't know what to do, so for the moment, he stood frozen and watched his dad gasp for air and beg him to keep it a secret.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Penny had forced herself to push her panic aside in favour of focus. Her dad was all over the place right now and couldn't be counted on to get them out of this, which meant it was down to her. The only problem was, she had no idea where to begin. Walking down the street towards her new school, she tried to forget about the Stevie-she-didn't-know walking beside her and tried to take account of their resources. They were rather scant. There hadn't been any sort of tech in Hammond's suitcase, which meant they were limited to only what was available in 1952. It was possible that in this dimension technology would be more advanced than that it had been in theirs, but so far as she could tell this universe was identical apart from the fact Stevie was here. Any great difference in the available resources therefore seemed unlikely; and in any case, it was alien tech that had sent them here- even if they'd had equipment from their own time, it wouldn't have been able to compete. Then there were their powers. Penny hadn't yet had opportunity to test whether she had hers, and would do so as soon as she could find a moment alone. Unfortunately, that too seemed unlikely. If Doctor Hammond didn't have an arc reactor, it seemed unlikely that Miss Hammond would have had any run-ins with genetically altered spiders.

So in terms of resources, they had basically nothing.

Coming at it the other way, they still had basically nothing. They had come here through a portal her dad accidentally opened using the arc reactor and alien tech whilst hideously drunk. Penny hadn't even seen most of what he'd done; what she had been present for she couldn't understand. Even if she did know how to get a portal to work, it led them straight back to the problem of their lack of tech. At the moment, the best she could hope for was that Thor would feel a sudden desire to visit Midgard sixty years early and bring the staff with him.

Penny felt utterly useless. It was a familiar feeling, one she'd had almost constantly until she had gone to Xavier's school. It wasn't a feeling she'd hoped to have again.

"You don't need to worry." Annie said, obviously seeing her frown. "It's a good school and the girls are nice. I'm sure you'll fit right in."

"Is it all girls?" Everything she had been trying to think about disappeared abruptly from Penny's head, swallowed up by horror. A new school was bad enough, without it being all girls.

"Yes, the boys' school is separate."

"Oh… girls don't usually like me."

"Don't be silly." Annie patted her shoulder lightly. "You'll be absolutely fine."

"I don't fit in with girls." Penny mumbled, but realised even as she said it that it was no longer quite true. At her old school, true, the worst people to be around had been the girls, who made way more spiteful comments than the guys ever did. But at Xavier's-

She had to stop thinking about school. She missed it too much.

"You'll feel better when you see the building." Annie insisted. "It's just round this corner."

They rounded the corner in silence, coming almost immediately to a waist high fence that bordered a grassy space filled with trees. Lamps set at intervals along the tarmacked walk ways just about illuminated the building at the end of it, a long, one-storey brick building. It looked friendly and welcoming and Penny did not trust it one bit. Annie began to point to windows, trying to remember what was inside each room.

"Mrs Stark?" Someone said. "Good evening."

Penny turned to see a young man approaching them, a girl who looked only a little older than her by his side.

"Oh, Charles, good evening. I thought you'd be back in England already. Hello, Raven, good to see you."

"Not yet." The man- Charles- replied. He was looking at Penny with interest. Penny squirmed, and tried to meet his eye.

"This is Penelope." Annie introduced her. "Doctor Hammond's daughter. They're staying with us for a while."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Hammond." He reached out to shake her hand and she had no choice but to take it. Something about the way he was looking at her, and the equally curious gaze of his companion, was unnerving. "Are you going to go to school here?"

"Um, yes." Penny said. "Mrs Stark just brought me to see the place."

"I can show you." The girl, Raven, piped up. "Come on, the gate's always open, let's go look round the grounds." Without further ado, she took Penny's arm and swept her away into the garden in front of the school.

It didn't seem to matter that Penny was shy, because Raven was more than able to do the talking for them both. They walked the grounds, but what they were looking at was barely mentioned as Raven chattered away, telling Penny about herself, the other girls, the teachers, and asking Penny as many questions in return, most of which Penny couldn't answer. She stuck as close to the truth as possible, but couldn't risk contradicting something out of the life of Miss Hammond that might be on school records or come out any number of other ways. As a result, many of her answers were single words, or mere shrugs. Raven seemed disappointed. Penny hoped she hadn't lost her one shot at making friends here, especially if there was no way they were getting back for the foreseeable future. To her surprise, however, Raven seemed determined to make her welcome.

"Are you coming to the match tomorrow?" She asked.

"Match?"

"Cricket." Raven said. "It's an old tradition. The boys' high school and the boys' grammar school compete every year and everyone comes out to watch. Then they have another game where anyone can play, just for fun. Mrs Stark is really good at it."

Penny couldn't help but smile at that. "Really?"

"Yeah. The year before last, she scored a century- and it was Mr Stark bowling. But last year she wouldn't play at all."

"Why not?"

"I'm not sure, maybe because she was pregnant? Mr Stark didn't come at all."

They completed the loop of the building, and came back to where Annie was standing and chatting to Charles. He smiled as they approached, and Penny wondered if she'd seen him before. Something about the way his face moved nagged at the back of her brain, telling her she'd seen it before.

"We'd better get back before it gets any later." He said. "It was good to see you, Mrs Stark. Oh, and actually, perhaps you could give my mother a call? I think there's been some confusion over centrepieces for the dance."

"Oh, of course, I'll call her in the morning."

"Thank you. We're all looking forward to it." He bowed, theatrically gallant. "I hope you'll save a dance for me, Mrs Stark."

Annie laughed good naturedly, but shook her head. "Unfortunately I won't be there on the night. The children…"

"Oh, well, more's the pity." Charles said. "But you will be at the cricket tomorrow, I hope?"

"Of course."

"Will you be playing?"

"I shouldn't think so; it's time to let the youngsters have a turn."

"I think you mean have a chance." Charles laughed. "Well, in any case, I'll see you tomorrow. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Charles and his sister turned and walked up the hill away from them, as Penny and Annie turned back the way they'd come around the corner.

"How did you get on with Raven?" Annie asked.

"Oh, okay. She seems nice. She asked me about the cricket tomorrow too."

"Well, you and your father would be more than welcome to join us." Annie smiled. "Charles is rather good at it; he used to be the star player for the grammar school. He's over in England for University now, I'm sure he gets plenty of practice."

"Does Raven play too?"

"Oh yes, not many of the girls do but she always joins in." Annie seemed to approve. "You should too."

"Maybe…" Penny said cautiously, always eager to enjoy the extra speed and co-ordination her powers had granted her. "I've never played it before."

"Yes, it's a strange one to choose. I think the grammar school was founded by an Englishman, that may be why. It's good fun though."

"Raven said you were really good at it. I guess the serum helps." Penny said. Annie looked at her with such shock that Penny immediately felt the need to back track. "Um, I don't mean it's cheating or anything, I just-"

"Penelope." Annie said, quietly and carefully. "Howard and I, we… we'd prefer it if you'd be discreet about that. Most people here don't know about my, my war record."

"…you aren't Captain America anymore?"

"No, not for years." Annie frowned. "People aren't supposed to know I woke up. Honestly, Penny, I'm surprised you knew about it."

"Oh, I… my dad told me." Penny said lamely, hoping she hadn't just dropped him squarely in it. She supposed she shouldn't have been so surprised that Annie had put down the mantle- after all, it had taken an alien invasion of New York to persuade her to pick up the shield in their own world. But then, she had always felt that it had just been an excuse. Being Captain America was what Stevie was meant for, and since they'd stopped the Chitari she had shown no sign that she wanted to give it up again. She was quite happy working for Shield, working as Captain America. Penny had assumed, kids or not, that this Annie was the same. There was no way she could be content to just sit on her hands and be a housewife- and let everyone think that was all she had ever been.

"Well, please don't pass it on." Annie said. "We've put all that behind us, so please keep it to yourself. From the children especially."

"You mean Teddy doesn't know?"

"No. We told him I carried on nursing throughout the war."

"But why?!"

The tone of protest was the wrong one to take. Annie pressed her lips together and didn't say anything more for several minutes, before changing the subject back to Raven as if nothing else had been said.

"Raven's a little older than you, so you may not be in classes together." She said. "Still, I'm sure she'll look out for you, she's a good girl. I can't ever remember what her surname is…"

"Isn't it the same as her brother's?" Penny asked, anxious to restore conversational norms after her last outburst.

"No, the Xaviers adopted her when she was young, I can't remember- Penelope? Is something wrong?"

_Charles Xavier_. No wonder his face had been so familiar. No wonder he had headed home up the hill that would one day lead to her own school. He was so young, she hadn't recognised him; but it could only be him, Professor Charles Xavier, her head teacher in some far-off future.

Who could, right this very moment, be hearing everything she was thinking. She tried to make her mind go blank, she couldn't give away any more than she already had until she'd consulted her dad. So she couldn't think about what he might or might not have pulled from her head, what he might or might not do with the information; and she couldn't think about _him_, couldn't wonder how he had lost his hair or the use of his legs, none of it. She had to stop. And Annie was still waiting for an answer.

"Um, um, I was just wondering what the dance he mentioned was."

"Oh, it's a fundraiser for the Veteran's Association. The WI are organising it, I'm part of the committee."

"Oh." Penny said, and didn't allow herself to say any more. It was absurd, obscene, that Annie put the work in and wasn't even attending; worse that she was helping veterans and nobody knew she was one, not even her kids.

Penny didn't like this world one bit. She wanted to go home; and maybe, just maybe, there would be some way Professor X could help.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Tony sat with his father at the kitchen table, drinking in silence. It was, to his knowledge, the first time they had ever done so. Howard was calmer now; embarrassed, angry, but calmer. Tony was lost in his own thoughts, lost in memories of his childhood. He'd been young, very young, and he'd woken up in the dead of night because of light spilling into his room. His father had been standing in the doorway, watching him, and when Tony had sleepily called out to him he had suddenly left, slamming the door behind him without a word. From time to time, it would happen again; though his dad had learnt to turn the landing light off first. There would be a slight sound, a slight movement, the smell of alcohol and tobacco, sometimes a catch in his dad's breathing, and sometimes Tony would lie there, too scared to move, sure he would get into trouble and other times he would sit up in defiance and stare right back, silently wondering why, if his dad was so eager to spend time with him, he never showed the remotest interest during the day. Every time, Howard would suddenly and wordlessly leave. It was downright creepy. Tony was just five and a half years old when he learnt how to fit a lock, and he did it on his bedroom door. There was just one time when the handle was rattled, but never again.

Ever since he had met Stevie, heard how different her version of his father was to the man he had known, Tony had begun to suspect his messed-up old man had been messed-up _by _something. That something, he suspected, could have been the loss of Annie- but here he had her, and he was still nuts. And still couldn't handle his kids. Is that what those night time visits had been about? Had he been trying to train himself to be around his son without getting angry, without having a freak out? It didn't make him any better in Tony's eyes. After all, what kind of man had panic attacks over their own children?

"I think you've had enough." He snapped as Howard went for another glass. "You don't need more booze, you need a therapist."

"You're not looking so hot yourself." Howard sneered, and Tony knew it was probably true. Even he couldn't deny the similarities between his dad's attack and his own reaction to the sceptre, to New York, to any of it. But he was Tony Stark, he didn't have panic attacks, he was _not _his father. And his father was not a figure of sympathy, his conduct was not forgivable. However screwed up he was in the head, he had no right to treat his family like crap. Tony wasn't here to learn a lesson and make up. None of this was even _real_, not in his world. This was just some crazy cuckoo world, where Stevie hadn't been frozen, where his dad was a tragic hero, where he actually loved- or wanted to love- his sons. None of it was _real_, and Tony wasn't here to fix up their world.

"Do what you like." He said, standing. "I'm going to bed."

"I'm not mad, Hammond." Howard said from the table. "There's nothing wrong with me."

Tony snorted.

"I mean it! It's just my nerves." Howard was on his feet now too. "Dammit, man, you weren't there!"

He was drunk. Between the scotch they'd had downstairs and the glasses now, he was drunk. It never did take much.

"I wasn't where?" Tony asked. He was hoping this would be the key for why he was there, what Howard wanted from Hammond. If he'd known it was just his dad's guilt complex, he would never have asked.

"Japan." Howard spat, ignoring his again-emptied glass and drinking straight from the bottle. "After the bomb. You weren't there. You didn't see it."

"I also didn't drop it." Tony said, helpfully, and no sooner had the words been dropped from his lips than his jaw received a solid punch from his dad. Which, in some ways, was just what Tony wanted, had wanted for years, because he finally, finally, had an excuse to punch him back.

Unfortunately, the scuffle was nowhere near as satisfying as his frustrated teenage fantasises. Neither of them was much good at hand to hand, and Howard was too drunk to really do more than shove. A few exchanges later and the whole thing fizzled out.

"I was just doing my job." Howard insisted, sinking back into a chair. "I didn't know- I didn't know what it would do. I didn't think they'd use it."

_Bullshit_, Tony thought, but said nothing.

"Stop looking at me like that!" Howard said, with all the irrational anger of those who know they deserve to be judged. "I've already had my punishment."

And, bidding farewell to the last of his masculinity, Howard turned back to the liquor cabinet to hide the tears gathering in his eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Tony, lying back on one of the disgracefully narrow beds in his father's spare bedroom, tried not to show too much delight in the low rumble of voices coming from downstairs that indicated the argument was still ongoing. Instead, he tried to pay attention to what Penelope was trying to tell him, in the backwards way of a panicked tweenager.

After the panic attack incident, things had happened fairly swiftly. Howard, almost in tears, had seemed hell-bent on getting roaring drunk and refused to talk about what the 'punishment' he had supposedly received was, even after so dramatically declaring it had happened. Tony had therefore tried to return to the topic of the Winter Soldier, suggesting the best thing to do was to let 'Mrs Stark' do her stuff and track him down; at which point he had been forced to dive out of the way of a whiskey glass being thrown at his head, sending the message that _Annie must not know_ _anything about Shield_ much more clearly than Howard's drunken, angry ramblings did. From what Tony could gather, Not-Stevie didn't even know what it was her husband did. He'd wanted to find out why, but then the woman herself had returned home, a startled-looking Penny in her wake. Annie had not been pleased to find her husband drunk, and Tony and Penny had decided to make a tactical early retirement to bed. It turned out that sound carried in this house, and from his position lying back on the bed, Tony could just make out the noise that suggested _words_ were being exchanged downstairs.

He tried not to be too pleased. After all, this wasn't real. He was going to undo it all and put things back to normal just as soon as he could. And even if it _was _real, it wasn't _his _Stevie. But still. There was something immensely satisfying about hearing them argue.

"Dad, you're not listening." Penny said, sitting on the edge of the other bed.

"Yes I am, just not to you." Tony answered. "I can hear that they're talking, but I can't hear what they're saying."

"Dad! You can't just eavesdrop on people's fights."

"She's my _fiancée. _I sort of have a vested interest in her relationships."

"This Stevie isn't." Penny wasn't impressed. "And our Stevie will be your ex if we don't get back soon. You did miss your own-"

"Yes, I know!" Tony cut her off. There was no need for her to remind him, no need for them to think about it.

"Like I _said_," Penny tried again. "Professor X is here. He's young."

"How young?"

"I don't know, maybe about twenty? Mrs Stark said he was at University."

"Hmm." Tony wasn't sure what to make of that. "He must be way older than he looks. Be careful when you go back to school, you're dealing with an octogenarian."

"Maybe he can help us get home."

"How?" Tony snorted. "By hypnotising us, making us cluck like chickens?"

"It was just a suggestion." Penny glared at him, then lay on the bed, rolling so her back was to him, meeting his dismissal with her own.

"Come on Pen…" He said, prodding her back. "Don't be like that."

"Why not?" Penny asked, sulkily. "It's not my fault we're even here, and when I try to help you just act like I'm an idiot!"

"No I don't. Come on, stop being dumb and tell me what happened."

She didn't need any more convincing. She told him about seeing her teacher and his sister, what they'd said, what they'd done. She told him about the cricket. She told him how Annie hadn't even told her kids that she used to be Captain America.

Tony sensed Howard in that decision and it made him furious. Stevie _deserved _praise. She deserved everything. And Howard was denying her that, for no other reason- Tony was sure- than because of his own petty envy, because he couldn't bear to be overshadowed by his wife. Whatever he said, however he had persuaded Annie, Tony was almost sure that would be the real reason, but he didn't say as much to Penny. Instead, he filled her in on his side, on Howard's panic and dramatics.

"Maybe that's where you get it." Penny mumbled.

"What?"

"The anxiety." Penny said, hesitantly. She knew he would bite her head off, and Tony knew she knew, but he was never one to disappoint his daughter. "It's like how you are about New York."

"I don't get anxiety!" He said, though his chest tightened and betrayed him even as he said it. "Just because I don't want to talk about something doesn't mean I'm not fine with it! Maybe I'm just sick of people going on about it all the time. I mean, I don't come up to you going 'Hey, Pen-pen, let's talk about when your Uncle got shot' and then say you're nuts if you get upset."

There was silence. The _words _had obviously been finished downstairs.

"No-one said you're nuts." Penny said, finally, as if that was the issue.

"No, you just _thought _it, like, super loud."

"I don't think you're nuts." Penny insisted. "Right now I just think you're kind of an asshole. Goodnight."

And with that, she rolled to face away from him again, pulling the covers right up. It was as away from him as she could get in a twin room. As dramatic exits went, it wasn't the best; but Tony let her have it. There was nothing else to do but turn out the light, even though it was still ridiculously early; turn out the light and try not to look too hard at what he had just said to his daughter. He'd missed his wedding to Stevie, there was no way she'd forgive him. He knew that, deep down, just like he knew Penny would stick by him- for now. But she was all he had, and if he messed this up…

For a little while, he watched her back through the gloom as they both pretended to sleep, before he realised what he was doing. Maybe Penny was right. Maybe he really did take after his dad.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

The next morning, Howard was clearly on his best behaviour. Hung over, clearly, and snapping at an excited Teddy to keep the noise down, but otherwise generally behaving like a decent human being, thanking his wife for breakfast and helping her stack the dishes. All this domesticity made Tony want to vomit. At least the atmosphere between them was still tense.

"Will you be joining us at the cricket today, Doctor Hammond?" Annie asked.

"Call me Tony. And sure, why not? As long as you don't expect me to play."

"We won't be playing." Howard reassured him.

"I might." Annie said, forcibly casual. Howard frowned at her, but obviously decided it was better not to say anything. He got up, turning to Tony instead.

"Come down to the basement first, Hammond. We need to finish our conversation."

"Just don't be down there all day." Annie said.

"Five minutes, I promise." Howard beckoned to Tony, leading him back down into the not-very-secret basement. Then again, if anything Tony knew about his dad was right, and if he knew anything about Shield, then the basement and probably the whole house would be a lot more secure than it appeared.

"Sorry about yesterday, Hammond." Howard said, brusquely, carrying on too fast for Tony to reply. "I'll come right to the point. You're the country's best man for Doppler, radar, detection… the Winter Soldier is a ghost. We need a way to track him."

"I can do that." Tony said. He probably could, too, even with the dinosaur components they would put in front of him. "But what are you going to do when you find him?"

"It's a war." Howard said by way of an answer, inching towards the stairs as he took a tobacco tin from his pocket, fumbling for a cigarette. Tony wondered vaguely when he had quit. Certainly before he was born. Tony was glad of it; he wouldn't have liked to have suffered through his dad's withdrawal on top of everything else. "Folk out there might not know it, they might think it's just a matter of stopping the Commies from taking over the town, but it's a war all the same. Just with spies instead of soldiers."

"Except for this guy." Tony tapped the Winter Soldier file, carelessly left out from the night before. "You said you thought he had some bastardised version of the serum. He's a super soldier."

"No." Howard denied, angry. "Not a super soldier."

"Something like it, then." Tony shrugged. "The fact is, I want to know how you think any of your guys are going to be good enough to get him."

Howard's jaw set. He began to climb the stairs.

"I'll find him for you. But you're going to need S- Mrs Stark."

"Annie is pregnant."

Tony winced mentally. As if he needed reminding. How many damn kids did these two need, anyway?

"So? She could still take him. Anyway, if he's as good as you say, the baby will be out before we pin him down."

"This conversation is over."

Tony followed him upstairs. "Fine. Just make sure it's a conversation you have with _her_."

"And what do you mean by that?" Howard demanded, pausing at the door.

"I mean, 'Mrs Stark' loves being Captain America and I can't imagine her being content to sit around her whole life waiting on you."

"I don't like your tone, Hammond."

"You shouldn't."

"The decisions Annie and I make aren't any of your business."

_Yes they are_, Tony wanted to say. _I love her_.

"No," He said. "Not my business. But they are _hers_. Does she even know what you do down here? You can't keep her sitting around ignorant!"

"Captain America is _dead_." Howard said. "And I will protect my wife however I see fit."

"Fine." Tony said. "But if I'm getting involved, Penny's knowing enough to keep her safe. If the Winter Soldier shows up, Penny's going to know to run in the other direction."

Although what would actually happen, presumably, is that Tony would tell her to run and Penny would decide to use her spider powers instead; if she still had them in this world. Or she would invite him inside for cookies and milk and to talk about his problems and get herself stabbed. As pleased as Tony was in the growth of her confidence since going to Xavier's School, Tony wished she'd retained a little more Hufflepuff and a little less Gryffindor.

"Fine." Howard said, tersely. "But you tell her the bare minimum. And she's not to breathe a word to Annie or Ted."

"Scout's honour." Tony rolled his eyes and followed Howard back into the kitchen where Not-Stevie was busy making sandwiches, assisted by Penny and, judging by the bread and butter being enthusiastically mushed into the tray of his wooden high chair, James. The baby burbled happily. Tony avoided looking at him, and noticed his dad was doing the same.

"That should be plenty, with the cake as well." Not-Stevie said, beginning to wrap the sandwiches in brown paper and packing them into a small picnic hamper.

"Do you want me to move it?" Howard asked, placing a hand on the small of her back as he went over to her. Tony felt a stab of jealousy and resisted the urge to tell him to get his hands off her. It was a stupid offer anyway. Thanks to the serum, Not-Stevie was probably the strongest person in the room.

"I have a few more things to pack." She replied. "Penelope, would you mind fetching the bottles out of the-?"

She was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. Not the one in the hall, either. This sound was coming from the basement.

"Back in a minute." Howard said.

"We're leaving soon." Not-Stevie warned him, stiffly.

"I know, I'll just be a minute." He slipped downstairs and a moment later the phone cut off; not because Howard had answered it but because he had turned the audio disrupter on, Tony suspected. James began to snivel and fuss in his high chair. Maybe his baby ears could hear something they couldn't. Not-Stevie took a cake from the bread bin and sliced it up before wrapping it and placing it in the hamper. Penny fetched the drink bottles; lemonade and root beer. Tony stood and watched awkwardly. James was grizzling now, working his way towards a full blown crying session.

Tony hated the sound of babies crying. And he wasn't too keen on the effect it apparently had on his dad.

"Yes, yes, mama will be with you in a minute." Annie told the child, trying to rearrange things in the hamper, and Tony could tell she was bored; not just now but bored of her _life_, the kind of deep-set boredom that settles in deep down and makes you fill time however you can, even spending a good ten minutes rearranging a picnic basket. The only time he'd seen her smile in this world was when she was talking to her children.

"I'll do it." He volunteered suddenly, impulsively, and suddenly wondered what he'd done. He hated babies. It had been awkward enough on those rare occasions he'd visited Penny as an infant, when he hadn't known how to hold her and she hadn't really known who he was. Now he was volunteering to pick up a child that was technically his older half-brother from an alternative past. For all he knew, making contact could cause the universe to implode. For all he knew, the baby needed a nappy change.

He hoped not. He was not ready to deal with that.

But James wasn't just his sort-of brother. He was also Not-Stevie's child, the child his own Stevie could never have. Tony picked him up, bounced him experimentally. James quieted down almost at once, though from his face Tony guessed it was more from surprise or fear than actual comfort. So, carefully, he held the baby closer to him. He wasn't really sure how to cuddle a baby- he was too scared of squashing it- but he guessed it was something like this. He was rewarded by the warmth of the kid squirming into his shirt, resting a head on his shoulder, and for all appearances falling asleep.

For impressing Stevie, it could not have gone better. She beamed at him from across the kitchen and, just for a second, Tony thought this was what it would be like if he had married her, if they had a baby of their own. But really, she couldn't have kids and he didn't want them; and even if they had one it would spend more time screaming than in peaceful scenes like this. And, of course, he hadn't married her. So he smiled back at Not-Stevie, tried to imprint the way it looked in his mind, just in case she never smiled at him that way again.

"Mama," Teddy dragged the word out as he looked into the kitchen. "Can we go yet?"

"In a minute. We just need to wait for Papa to finish on the telephone."

"But Gordon's going already! I just saw him go past!"

"And we'll go in a minute, Teddy. Go on, go and put your shoes on, and then you can make sure the back gate is locked."

"Okay." Teddy said, and his reluctance was so obviously a façade for his excitement at the responsibility that Tony had to try not to laugh. The kid had obviously inherited the Stark gene for subtlety.

Howard finally came up from downstairs, but barely. He came up, shut the basement door behind him, and didn't let go of the handle as he turned apologetically to Annie. Tony knew what was coming. He'd adopted that body language himself more than once.

"Annie, I'm sorry, something's come up. I'm going to have to go to work."

"Go this afternoon." She said. "You promised Ted."

"It's not stuff for Stark Enterprises. This is the government work."

"I'm sure the communists can wait until after lunch, Howard."

There was a frosty silence.

"Have a good time." Howard said, finally, leaning over to kiss her cheek.

"Are you going to explain to Teddy?"

"Just tell him I have to work." Howard snapped. "He'll understand."

"Well, he certainly won't be surprised."

"I'll see you later." Howard said, and disappeared down into the basement.

"Jerk." Tony said.

"He wouldn't do it if it wasn't important." Annie frowned at him. Tony wondered if his Stevie was the same, and defended him even when he didn't deserve it, even when she was angry.

"Yeah, well, if you were my wife, you'd be the most important thing."

Annie said nothing. Penny merely looked at him in disbelief until Tony shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. It was true he'd missed the odd date because of work himself, but usually it was just that he hadn't noticed the time, not that he'd cancelled. And he'd never missed one that had obviously been on the calendar for weeks, and he wouldn't let the kids down like that. He stared back at Penny in defiance. It wasn't the same thing at all.

Something in the back of his mind whispered about the missed wedding, all the missed visits to Penny as a child. He silenced it, and gallantly carried the picnic basket himself while Not-Stevie pushed the pram and Edward persuaded Penny to run on ahead with him. They were at the end of the street when they heard Howard getting in the car and driving the other way. Tony watched him go, but Annie didn't even turn around. For the first time, they were alone together.

He knew what he should do, of course. He ought to grill her, find out why she was here, not in the future. Find out, maybe, why she wasn't Captain America any more, why his Dad was so screwed up; maybe find some clue as to why they were here. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. The last time he had spoken to Stevie- his Stevie- she had been furious with him. She had thought he had left her standing at the altar deliberately, he'd shattered her trust. Yet this Stevie was here and not mad at him, pleased with him, even, compared to her husband; and he didn't want to spoil that. He didn't want her to be annoyed with him in two dimensions. Besides which, if she suspected his motives, she would just clam up altogether and not tell him anything at all. This would take tact and diplomacy.

So instead, he asked why on earth there was a town in America in 1952 still playing cricket, and she told him all about the Victorian Englishman who had established the grammar school and, it seemed, sought to reintroduce a few colonial comforts a hundred years after independence. When he saw the playing fields, surrounded by gently rolling grassy hills and a few old oaks, Tony could almost understand it. A green and pleasant land indeed.

Edward had already chosen their spot, and took great pride in explaining at length why it was the best available. He waited until his mother and Penny had laid down the picnic blanket up to his standards, and then ran off to play with his friends. Tony, not sure what else to do, sat down with the others. He wondered how many years it had been since he had sat on the ground like this, what with the hundreds of bugs probably crawling around beneath him and the open air and all. It was sort of cloudy. He bet it was going to rain. That would just be typical.

Not-Stevie was smiling at him, he could tell. Trying not to laugh as she poured them drinks into tall glasses. He had really missed that look.

"What?" He asked.

"I'm guessing you aren't used to picnics, Doctor." She said, amused. "Not the outdoorsy kind, are you?"

"Why would I need to go outdoors?" He asked, "I have windows. And air con."

He wondered suddenly if they even had air con yet. She wasn't staring at him in confusion, so he guessed they must do. He needed to remember to be more careful, remember that this wasn't his Stevie. But damn, she was beautiful. He didn't know how Howard could treat her the way he did. Then again, at least Howard had gotten as far as the altar.

Before Not-Stevie could reply- and before Tony's thoughts could get even more depressing- their blanket was approached by a girl perhaps a year or two older than Penny. It only took a glance at his daughter's face for Tony to realise that this must be Xavier's sister, who didn't seem to notice Penny's alarm but smiled warmly.

"Penelope, come sit with us for the match." She said. "There's a bunch of us from school over there."

"Um, no, I…"

"Oh, go on, Penny, I'm sure your father doesn't mind." Not-Stevie said.

"Not at all." Tony smiled at her. Penny frowned back at him, unable to look severe in her panic. But honestly, he didn't see what harm it could do. If Xavier was here, and could read their minds, he would already be doing it. And if he knew they were from another world, so what? He would know their intentions were good, that they were here by mistake. Even if he did try to tell someone, what good would it do? No-one would believe him, some weird kid studying overseas. How would he even explain where he had supposedly gotten the information without revealing his own powers? Let Xavier find out whatever he wanted. It wouldn't do him any good.

Unless he went to Howard. Howard whose business, really, was the strange and peculiar. Who had dealt with Super Soldiers and Alien tech and Soviet assassin-phantoms. Who might just believe that someone could read minds, that someone was from the future. Who might believe his son from an alternative universe was out to steal his wife.

Tony's brain caught up to the danger far too late. Penelope had already been dragged away to the far side of the pitch, or playing field, or whatever you called it when you played cricket on it and there was no way to get her back without it looking suspicious to everyone, let alone Xavier. Tony searched the crowd instead, but couldn't see anyone who resembled the old man he knew. He relaxed slightly. Maybe it was going to be alright after all. They had lucked out today, but after this they would need to be careful, guarding their thoughts.

To that end, he tried to focus on the game, on Annie. She had James in her lap, bouncing him up and down a little as she watched the teams from the two schools get into position. The baby burbled happily, and Tony took the image, tried to align it with the woman he knew. He had far more memories of Stevie in action, beating up the bad guys, than of peaceful moments like this. He wondered which Stevie was happiest, thought how unfair it was that she couldn't have them both.

If he'd married her, he would have given her both. He wouldn't have tied her down to home and family like Howard had. She could have been Captain America as long as she'd wanted. And if she'd wanted a kid, he would have overcome his dislike for them and done that for her too, even if her time in deep freeze had made her infertile. He would have found a way. They could even have adopted; no-one was going to say no to superheroes, with the wealth of a small nation and a huge corporation behind them to boot. He would have done it and she could have had it all. He didn't know what it was Howard was trying to protect her from.

"She'll be alright." Annie said, suddenly. "Raven's a nice girl."

"What?" He suddenly realised his silence must've been mistaken for concern. "Oh, right, yeah. Penny's not the sort to be led astray anyway."

"Has she always been shy?"

"Yeah… her middle school wasn't so good." Hopefully that wouldn't be a lie when it came to Miss Hammond. "I started her at a different school last year and that improved her confidence a lot, but now…"

"It must be difficult for her to move again."

"Well, hopefully we won't be here too long."

She looked at him, surprised. "Howard made it sound as if it were a more long term arrangement."

"That's because he's overestimating how long it'll take me to do the work he wants."

She couldn't help but laugh then. "Well, yes, I'd heard you were years ahead of everyone else in your area."

"You have no idea." Tony answered, and then, because it seemed like a suitable place, he asked, "Does he really not tell you what he does?"

"No." she frowned, but he got the impression it was directed more at him than her husband. He was right, prying was just going to shut her down.

"Does he even tell you why he won't?"

She gripped James a little tighter, holding him closer. "We had a hard few years." She said. "After the war." It didn't answer the question. "Oh, look! That must be a six!"

The change in subject was hardly subtle, but Tony backed off gracefully. He turned to watch the match, game, whatever, instead. By the end, the only thing he had found out was that the rules of cricket made no sense whatsoever.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Xavier was there after all. Tony just hadn't recognised him because he was so young and, well, hairy. It was a shame. Tony had been having such a nice afternoon.

It was easy to forget, when he spent time alone with her, that this wasn't Stevie. She talked a little differently, more stiffly and old fashioned, and there were a few more lines round her eyes, but inside, he was sure she was the same. He could still make her laugh. She still got overly involved in watching sport. She still favoured the underdog and was cheering for the school where the education was free, who in the end, lost badly. (At least Tony thought so. Even the scoring in this game didn't make any sense. She tried to explain it to him, but his eyes had glazed over when she had started talking about overs).

Penny and Edward had reappeared at lunchtime, and Tony had to admit, it was fun. Even though the blanket was doing nothing to cushion his butt from the hard ground, and there were probably ants in all the food, and it all tasted weird to his modern palate anyway, it was fun. Edward was a pretty cool kid, when you got talking to him. Smarter than you would have thought, if you only ever saw him stealing shaving mirrors to make faces in, but a little too in awe of his father, a little too used to being let down. He reminded Tony of Tony, and that, perhaps, was why they were getting on. Brothers united by subpar parenting. At least Edward had a mom a little less clueless than Tony's own had been, and maybe that was why he was distinctly better behaved. Better at sitting and eating up his food, kinder to his baby brother and guests, polite to his mother. Tony, it almost went without saying, had not been like that at the age of four. Then again, as smart as Edward was, it didn't seem like he had invented his first electromagnetic generator yet, so there was that.

Tony wondered when exactly it had become a contest. Honestly, Edward was probably better off anyway. All Howard had said about four year old Tony's first generator was a detailed critique of its energy efficiency before telling him to start over.

Once the food was gone, the kids disappeared again. Edward was eager to join in with the open match (apparently there were no age limits) and equally certain that Penny should join him. He didn't even bother asking his mother.

"I'll stick with the baby if you want to go and join in." Tony had said, and Annie had seemed so startled that Tony figured men in the 1950s- or at least Howard- were rarely so accommodating. Even so, she'd turned him down, and they'd sat back to watch the game together. It was nice. The afternoon was warm, his butt was now so numb he wasn't noticing how uncomfortable he was, and the teams were really just two large gaggles of people of all ages and abilities playing for the fun of it. He and Stevie were quiet together, relaxed, comfortable, all the things they should be around one another. He kind of wished she would join in. He could see she wanted to.

When he got home- if he got home, and if Stevie forgave him- he would take her to see a baseball match. She'd enjoy it. They'd be okay.

Then, just as Tony finished that thought, Xavier had gone up to bat. He wouldn't have recognised him at all, if Annie hadn't told him that was who it was; but Xavier undoubtedly knew him, staring curiously up into the stands.

_Perhaps_, Tony thought hopefully, _He doesn't have his powers here_. After all, the arc reactor was gone from his chest, Stevie was no longer Captain America for some reason, and they hadn't found anywhere private enough to check Penny's powers out yet. It wasn't too much to hope that maybe, just maybe, Xavier didn't have the creepy telepathy here.

Except he kept looking up at Tony and was still hitting every shot, almost as if he knew exactly what the other team were going to bowl.

Well, Tony couldn't let that stand. He needed to show some strength here, make the first play before the kid did. Show he wasn't intimidated and wasn't afraid of Xavier knowing who he was. Besides, you couldn't cheat at cricket, it would make the collective dead of Britain roll in their graves. He decided to join in after all, wandering down and cutting in on the bowler, who didn't seem to care- he extended the usual small town welcome, saying it wasn't like he was getting anywhere anyway.

From the other end of the playing field, Tony saw Xavier sizing him up, looking confused in spite of everything. Good. Tony tried to keep his mind blank as he stood on the spot, turning the ball over in his hands.

_There's no point trying to read my play, kid. _Tony thought. _Because I have no idea how to do any of them. _

It was worth it, just to see the shock on Xavier's face. Tony threw the ball any old how in the general direction of the bat, Xavier swung and missed, and the ball collided with the wooden sticks behind him. They toppled over, and Xavier was declared out, to the delight of Tony's team.

_Serves you right for invading my thoughts, cheat. _Tony thought, as loudly as he could. Xavier smiled politely, and, hopefully, withdrew from Tony's mind. Tony just hoped it would be enough to intimidate him, to keep him out of their business and way from Howard. It certainly kept him away from them. He went to sit behind his team and stayed well away from Tony, as he went back up to join Annie.

"They wanted you to carry on playing." She said.

"I know." He sat back down beside her. "But I'd rather be here." She smiled, but didn't reply. Tony was very glad indeed that Howard wasn't here. He bet she never smiled like that for him.

The afternoon went on, and the baby began to fuss, grizzling until he started crying in earnest and Annie couldn't calm him down. The game was winding down and Annie decided it was time to go home. When Edward protested (and Tony saw some more of himself in the kid as he watched the tantrum begin), Penny volunteered to stay with him until the end and so then it was just Tony, Stevie and the baby, walking home together. He could've said anything he liked. If he hadn't been carrying the basket, and she hadn't been pushing the pram, he could have taken her hand. He might have done, if it had been his Stevie. When Howard wasn't there, it was kind of hard to remember that she wasn't.

They had to walk right past Xavier to get out. Tony was determined to brush past him as if nothing had happened, as if the encounter didn't matter in the slightest, but Xavier caught his eye anyway.

"Goodbye, Mr Stark." He said, evenly. "Take care."

"Goodbye, Charles." Annie said, apparently thinking he was talking to her. Tony said nothing, but as they walked home, he could feel the worries beginning to work into the cracks at the back of his mind. Wondering if that had been a threat, if Penelope was safe being left there alone, if Xavier was still a good guy in this world, if he would think _they _were the bad guys and act accordingly. It could have been a nice walk, if the circumstances were different.

There was a car outside the house as they arrived, waiting for them. For a moment Tony thought Howard was back, but no, this car was black and clean, nothing that would particularly stand out on the roads, but that he would bet his bottom dollar was bristling with Shield and Stark Enterprises tech. A woman stepped out of it.

She was small, slight, elegant, with long red hair that was pulled up, piled high on her head in the latest, slightly scandalous, style. She looked pretty, but tensed and ready, dangerous. She was also, quite definitely and most undoubtedly, Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow, who was on the Avengers roster sixty years from now, who had worked at Stark Industries for a while and given her date of birth as 1984. Who had probably lied about her date of birth when she was Natalie, but who was most definitely _not _old enough to be standing outside his dad's house in 1952.

"Excuse me, Doctor Hammond," she said, and her accent still had a trace of Russian in it, enough to make Annie frown suspiciously. "I'm Agent Romanov. Mr Stark has requested your help at the office."

Natasha was scary enough when she was definitely on your side, and possibly your friend. She was even scarier now, standing next to an unfamiliar car and trying to persuade Tony into it.

"I don't work on Sundays." Tony replied.

"I'm afraid it can't wait." She said, opening the back door of the car. Tony slid in, because he could see he wasn't going to win this fight and he would rather not be forced. She shut the door behind him, and all the windows were blacked out. Natasha thanked Mrs Stark and slid into the front.

"I'm going to put the screen up." She said, leaning over the seat to speak to him. "Director Stark thinks it's better the less you know."

"Yeah, that seems to be _Director _Stark's policy." Tony snorted. "By the way, how old are you, Agent Romanov?"

A black screen rolled up between them, which, in fairness, was probably not a dissimilar answer to the one he would have gotten from her in his own time. Now he couldn't even see out of the front of the car. He was completely enclosed, completely cut off, as Natasha started the engine and drove him away, either to the Shield headquarters of the past or to his own untimely grave.


End file.
